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THE UNIVERSAL ORDER 



'" What canst thou fear 

if the Universal Order be 

thy friend. 



The UNIVERSAL 
ORDER ^^g^ 

FriederikaQuitmanOgden 
Published by Paul Elder ^ 
Company o/San Francisco 




COPYRIGHT, 1915 

PAUL ELDER & COMPANY 

SAN FRANCISCO 







"We Count It 
Death to Falter, Not 
To Die'' 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

MRS. FRIEDERIKA QUITMAN OGDEN, YOUNG- 
EST DAUGHTER OF GENERAL JOHN ANTHONY 
QUITMAN AND ELIZA TURNER, WAS RORN AT 
MONMOUTH, MISSISSIPPI, IN 1844 AND LIVED 
THERE UNTIL HER MARRIAGE AT EIGHTEEN 
TO MR. FRANCIS EUGENE OGDEN. 
IT WAS THE PERIOD OF THE CIVIL WAR AND, 
AS IN THE CASE OF MANY A YOUNG COUPLE 
AT THAT TIME, THE BRIDE AND GROOM WERE 
SOON PARTED NOT TO BE TOGETHER AGAIN 
UNTIL THE TERRIBLE STRUGGLE BETWEEN 
NORTH AND SOUTH ENDED. 

NOT LONG AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 
MR. OGDEN DIED AND MRS. OGDEN RETURNED 
TO HER OLD HOME AT MONMOUTH. EVER 
SINCE HER husband's DEATH SHE HAD 
BEEN SOMEWHAT OF AN INVALID. SHE SUF- 
FERED MORE AS TIME WENT ON, UNTIL 
WHEN A LITTLE OVER THIRTY SHE BECAME 
A "shut in," bearing her CONDITION WITH 
MUCH PATIENCE BECAUSE OF AN UNDAUNTED 
FAITH IN ULTIMATE RECOVERY. 
DURING HER YEARS OF GREATEST HELPLESS- 
NESS SHE MADE HER HOME AT BERKELEY 
SPRINGS, WEST VIRGINIA, AND IT WAS HERE 
THAT SHE WROTE A JOURNAL, RECORDING IN 
IT BRIEF SKETCHES OF OUT-DOOR NATURE, 
HER OWN SPIRITUAL PROGRESS, MEDITA- 

IX 



TIONS ON THE WORDS AND DEEDS OF GREAT 
AUTHORS OR SOMETIMES OF THE VILLAGE 
PEOPLE WHO WERE HER FRIENDS. 
SHE WAS A WOMAN OF INTENSE LOYALTY 
IN FRIENDSHIP. MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS 

WAS AMONG THOSE DEAR TO HER MRS. 

SIDNEY LANIER. NAME AND RANK, HOW- 
EVER, MATTERED NOT AT ALL. WHETHER 
RICH OR POOR, HIGH OR LOW, CHILD OR 
PHILOSOPHER, A FRIEND, TO MRS. OGDEN, 
WAS ONE WHO IN SOME WAY SATISFIED 
HER SOUL. 

SOME EIGHT OR NINE YEARS AGO, HER 
HEALTH REING IMPROVED, SHE WAS MAR- 
RIED TO MR. AUSTIN W. SMITH, A FIRST 
COUSIN OF MR. OGDEN's. ROTH MR. AND 
MRS. SMITH DIED IN 1911, MRS. SMITH 
SURVIVING HER HUSRAND RUT FOUR MONTHS 
AND DYING AT "SARRAGOSSA," THEIR COUN- 
TRY HOME NEAR NATCHEZ. SHE HAD NO 
CHILDREN. IN HER OWN CHILDHOOD SHE 
WAS REMARKARLY REAUTIFUL AND THE 
LOVELINESS OF HER EARLY YEARS CONTIN- 
UED TO DEVELOP THROUGHOUT A NOELY 
GRACEFUL WOMANHOOD, EVEN HER POOR 
HEALTH HAVING NO POWER TO EFFACE IT 
ALL. WHAT HER MIND WAS, THE READER 
MAY GATHER FROM HER THOUGHTS IN THIS 
LITTLE VOLUME. 

E. C. L. 



INTRODUCTION 

FROM THE BED OF AN INVALID WHAT 

MIGHT HAVE BEEN, LIKE HEINE'S, A "MAT- 
TRESS grave" THE FOLLOWING THOUGHTS 

WERE JOTTED DOWN AT INTERVALS BETWEEN 
MORE OR LESS LINGERING PERIODS OF IN- 
TENSE SUFFERING. THEY ARE THE ME- 
MORIAL NOT MERELY OF A BRAVE AND 
PERSEVERING FIGHT FOR HEALTH, BUT OF 
A SOUL WRESTLING FOR TRUTH WITH A 
MIND UPTURNED AND DARKENED BY DOUBT 
AND AT TIMES IN BLANK DESPAIR. IT IS 
A STRUGGLE LIKE THAT OF JACOB WITH THE 
ANGEL, "l WILL NOT LET THEE GO EXCEPT 
THOU BLESS ME." 

THROUGH SEVEN YEARS OF STRESS THE 
RECORD GOES, THE PHYSICAL POWERS AFTER 
MANY DISAPPOINTMENTS MAKING HEADWAY 
AND THE SOUL-LIFE OUTRUNNING THEM IN 
EVER WIDENING AND DEEPENING SPIRITUAL 
EXPERIENCE, THE HEART OF THE SUFFERER 
MEANTIME OPEN TO THE BEAUTIFUL IN 
NATURE, AND HER MIND, BY THE POWER 
OF A DEVOTED AND UNCONQUERABLE WILL, 
OCCUPIED WITH THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
THAT THE STRUGGLE AVAILED IN ITS RE- 
SULTS FOR OTHERS, WE WHO KNEW HER 
CAN TESTIFY. WE KNOW ALSO THAT THIS 
EPOCH WAS IN HER OWN CAREER AN UN- 

XI 



CONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR A BEAUTIFUL 
AND TENDER PERIOD OF FULLER LIFE DUR- 
ING THE YEARS OF GRADUALLY RETURNING 
HEALTH WHICH FOLLOWED. 
HER JOURNAL, RECORDING, AS IT DOES, A 
"lonely HUMAN SOUL's'* INDIVIDUAL WAY 
OF SEEKING OUT AND FINDING GOD AS THE 
IDEAL TRUTH AND LOVE AND BEAUTY, IS 
A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION TO US TODAY, 
WHILE, FOR THE MEMORY OF HER DEEP 
HEART AND UNFALTERING SPIRIT, WE 
"thank GOD AND TAKE COURAGE." 

H. L. J. 



XII 



CONTENTS 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ix 

INTRODUCTION xi 

WITH NATURE 

On the Seashore 3 

A Peaceful Scene 4 

Solitude with Nature 4 

The Living Whole 5 

Morning Under the Trees 6 

True Worship 6 

Reason 7 

The Uniting Principle of Love ... 7 

Autumn's Melancholy Music .... 8 

The Beauty of the Morning .... 8 

Genius 9 

Poetry 9 

Joan of Arc 11 

The "Odor of Sanctity" 12 

Rain 12 

Preconscious Nature 13 

Nature at Pause 14 

Morning 14 

A Dreamer 15 

Autumn Sky 15 

The Poet Is Protean 15 

The Return of the Birds 16 

October 16 

No Drones 16 

The Peace of the Sky 17 

Visitors 17 

Sleep and Re-awakening to Pain ... 18 

TRANSPLANTATION 

The Dawn of Faith 21 

Snow 22 

Joy a State of Sanity 22 

Transplanting 23 

Innocent Joy 23 

A Day Like Distant Music 25 

"Do Justly and Love Mercy" .... 25 

XIII 



There Is a Light of Lights .... 25 

The Bitter 26 

Spring, and Signs of Physical Progress . 26 

The Soul Obedient to Nature .... 27 

The Universe Is Good 27 

Moving with Night and Morning ... 28 

Life Is Good 28 

The Soul's New World 29 

Trees 29 

The Wren 32 

Joy in All Guises 32 

August 33 

Joy, Not Hell 34 

Rousseau 35 

Under the Trees 36 

The Happiness of a Double Existence . 37 

The Tragedy of Life 38 

Innocent Joy a Phoenix 38 

Hope and Faith 38 

Beethoven's Eighth Symphony ... 39 

The Holy Stars 40 

To Rest 40 

A Methodical Life 40 

To the Condemned 42 

The Day of Peace at Hand .... 42 

Beauty 43 

Branches and Stars 43 

Walt Whitman's Death 44 

Goethe 44 

The Body 45 

Great Truths 45 

The Ocean 4'5 

The Storm Is Raging 46 

Butterflies 46 

The Morning's Baptism of Light and Life 46 

Divinity in Monotony 47 

My Miracles 47 

The Little Hen 48 

The Winter of the Heart 48 

As One of the Stars of Heaven ... 48 

The Pride and Self-Poise of Genius . . 49 

A Mind Omnivorous 49 

Poetry Versus Science 49 

Sudden Events 50 

XIV 



UNFOLDING 

The Soul Awaking 53 

Soul Travail 54 

The Ideal Vision of the Universe ... 56 

Drifting 57 

The Bleeding Heart 58 

An Inrush of Power 58 

The Soul's Contentment . . . . . 58 

The Blooming of the Grape .... 5!) 

Clouds 59 

Doves' Voices 60 

Why the World Is So Beautiful ... 60 

Robins 60 

Is the Bitter Sweet To-day? .... 61 

A Little Moment of Divine Life ... 61 

The Pine Tree 61 

The Life of the Mind 62 

Brain and Spirit 62 

The Commonplace 62 

Summer 63 

A Divine Music 64 

An Exquisite Pain of Soul 64 

Transmutation 64 

The Soul in Transition 64 

"Gods, Though in the Germ" .... 65 

The Poetic Perspective 66 

Resignation 66 

A Jar of Grasses 66 

Stages of the Soul's Unfolding ... 67 

The Poet 68 

Poetry Involves Abstract Ideas . . . 69 

Swinburne 69 

The Joy of Trust 72 

"O Peter, Go Ring Dem Bells" .... 72 

The Diver of the Soul 72 

Clouds and Moods 73 

Eternal Thought 73 

The Sciences the Slaves of Thought . . 74 

Tennyson's Death 74 

Indian Summer 75 

The Lone Farm House 75 

The Why 76 

Modern Progress and Sentiment ... 77 

Sunrise 79 

XV 



IN HARMONY 

The World of the Still Things ... 83 

The Common Nature 84 

The Pity of It 84 

Acquired Youthfulness .85 

The Day of Knowledge 86 

The Red-Bird's Song 88 

A Vision of the Sun 88 

My Method of Study 88 

To the Plum Tree 90 

Sounds to the Poet 91 

The Solemn Procession of the Clouds . 91 

One Happy Moment 91 

As the Thread Through a String of Pearls 92 

The Mystic Power of Spring .... 92 

Only One of the Gleaners 92 

Imprisonment 93 

Philosophy 93 

The Cry of Dives 94 

Philosophy Is Homesickness .... 94 

In a Thunderstorm 94 

The Divine Doors 95 

Under the Sky 96 

Entering Upon the Mastery of Life . . 97 

Co-operation 98 

Heaven Here and Now 99 

Despair the Tempter in the Desert . . 100 

Ladye Spiritual 100 

A Moment in the Eternal Now . . . 101 

Truth Is Not Cheap 101 

Metaphysic 102 

Woman Suffrage 102 

The Brute Law Versus the Higher Law . 103 

Creative Love Versus War and Plunder . 104 
The Life of the Soul Like the Globe in 

Variety 106 

The Crushed Herb's Fragrance . . . 106 
The Bird with a Poet's Heart . . . .107 

The Flowers' Death-Song 108 

The Inner Voice 108 

The Empyrean of Ideas 108 

When Life Appears Unreal .... 109 

Madame de Stael 109 

The Poetry of Life 109 

XVI 



Poetry Makes Rich 110 

The Cost of the Right Road . . . .110 

The Beautiful Tree of Poetry .... Ill 

Music 113 

I Know Only My Ignorance .... 113 

Inspiration and Purposive Action . . . 114 

Mediocrity and Genius 114 

Sons of God 114 

The Poem of My Own Life . . . .116 

Genius Makes a New Era 116 

Memories 116 

The Cheering Principles of Philosophy . 117 

Philosophy Versus Agnosticism . . . 117 

A Person of Genius 117 

Four Moments of Life 118 

A Drive in the Mountains 118 

As the Shekinah to Israel 119 

Little Efforts 119 

Good Only Is Real . 120 



XVII 



With Nature 

I knew myself 

a conscious part of a Living Whole; 

conscious of the sense of touch 

with the Living Whole. 




WITH NATURE 

June 4, 1887. The sound of the ocean is 
in my ears. I see the long, blue line of its 
magnificent waters from my window. I 
hear the songs of the birds, the chirp of 
the cricket, and look out upon spreading 
fields of buttercups and other wild 
flowers. Above, the heavens are seen 
without let or hindrance. One can be 
very near to Nature here. 

September 5. Spent the afternoon on 
the inland dune, reading Emerson's 
"Plato." 

September 9. In these days Nature is 
seen in her most beautiful aspects. The 
skies are wonderfully deep and blue, the 
air is a very wine of life, the dear woods 
are full of the voices of the winds, of 
birds, of insects. The trees and flowering 
plants and all the little weeds have borne 
their fruits. Mind and heart are arriv- 
ing at fuller development; the spirit, too, 
is bearing fruit — a spiritual harvest time 

3 



On the 

Seashore 



WITH NATURE 

to match the harvest of Nature. I am 
growing into an ever-deepening sense of 
the One-ness, the Gommon-ness of all 
things. Henceforth I shall rejoice more 
than weep. I stand upon the threshold 
of a new life. 

A Peaceful September 27. Spent almost the whole 
Scene day, yesterday, in the field and on the 
inland dune, reading "The Invisible 
Lodge" and Comte's Philosophy by John 
Stuart Mill. The air was soft and balmy. 
The sun shone out fitfully from behind 
many shifting clouds. The landscape of- 
fered a peaceful scene and in the distance 
was the ocean with its ships. 

November 2. I had a good view of the 
Statue of Liberty — the gift to America 
from the French Republic. The majestic 
figure fills the heart with renewed love 
of freedom. 

Solitude May 15, 1888. For months I have battled 
with Nature ^lone with the Powers of Darkness. All 
my eff'orts toward recovery have proved 
worse than failures. Marred, bruised, 
crippled, almost dead from mortal com- 
bat with the deadly powers of human 
ignorance, I was brought out into the 
wholesome, saving influences of the coun- 
try. Here I began a life outdoors, taking 
rugs and lying on the grass all day. I 
got well sun-burned. As I journeyed out, 
4 



WITH NATURE 

Spring was visible in tender buds on 
bough and twig. Even the dirt roads, 
the naked branching trees and the in- 
creasing solitudes, poured balm into my 
wounds. Nature, my nourishing Mother, 
has nursed her sick child upon her 
bosom and I am better. The work of 
restoration will be slow. 

October 14. Returning health flows 
through my life channels. Surely this 
summer's solitude with Nature, where I 
drank direct from her eternal fountains, 
and the wise books I had for compan- 
ions, went far toward bringing all my 
past life of thought and feeling under the 
focussing light of a newer and larger 
conception, which in due season will 
bring forth fruits for a higher and nobler 
life — simpler and humbler. 

November 12. I am reading the noble The Living 
philosophy of Epictetus. There is a grow- Whole 
ing, an ever-deepening intimacy between 
the Soul and the Universe. Last night as 
I looked out my window into the sky and 
saw the stars, a vital and living sense of 
nearness came into my soul. I knew my- 
self a conscious part of a Living Whole; 
conscious of the sense of touch with the 
Living Whole. The Soul was awed and 
cried aloud. O for an ever-increasing 
realization of the Eternal Presence! 



WITH NATURE 

Morning July 30, 1889. I see Miss Mollie's corn 
Under patch. It is bearing grain. I see the tall 

the Trees stalks, each one erect and rejoicing in its 
life, the leaves glistening in the sun. I 
saw it planted in the spring. 
The trees stand erect, near-by, uncom- 
plaining. Overhead the sun "rejoices as 
a giant to run his course" in the calm 
and eternal heaven, that ethereal ocean 
upon whose bosom all life is reposing — 
planets, suns, systems. Shall the Soul 
alone grovel in the dust of discontent, in 
the midst of this cheerful company? 
What canst thou fear if the Universal 
Order be thy friend? 

True July 31. What is true worship? Is it 
Worship not having a mind reverent to law, that 
law we call divine because it is uni- 
versal? 

Worship does not consist in thought 
only, but also in act — thought made 
moral by action. 

True worship is guided by reason and 
set on fire by feeling. Right feeling is 
the flower of reason. Reason is the 
power by which we judge, by which we 
know. Reason is the direct door to un- 
derstanding. Jesus has said that you 
must enter the Kingdom of God by the 
door. He spoke of himself as the door, 
because he lived and taught by reason, 

6 



WITH NATURE 

not by instinct and passion as do most 
men. Matthew Arnold speaks of the 
"Sweet reasonableness" of Jesus. The 
true worshiper can enter the temple of 
the Divine only by the door of sweet 
reasonableness. 

August 3. The Soul grows strong to Reason 
stand alone. A clear, beautiful vision on 
the Mount today! Reason was seen to 
be a veritable part of divine Reason. All 
the good that comes into life, as well as 
the good that comes out of seeming mis- 
fortune, comes through reason's right 
activity, when her dictates are listened 
to and passion permits her free activity. 
My soul was filled with truth. She com- 
muned with divine Reason. 
Love is the flowering of reason. 

August 4. I see the universe moving on- xhe Uniting 
ward in stars, systems, galaxies, by the principle 
same law of love — attraction that thrills of Love 
and controls the life of the Soul; the 
same law of love that brings together 
friends, lovers, comrades, uniting the 
Lonely Human Soul into one life with 
her comrade-Soul — lonely no more for 
she enters into the universe of Truth, and 
love elevates and exalts the Soul. She 
becomes united by the law of love with 
friends, lovers and comrades in the 
league of the Universal. 



WITH NATURE 

Autumn^s August 6. I hear the death songs of the 
Melancholy little crickets in the seeded grass. The 
Music songs of the birds are hushed. Already 
some leaves are turning and dropping. 
There is a note of autumn in the sound 
of the rain's constant drip, drip. The 
winds begin to roam with that wild free- 
dom and melancholy music peculiar to 
this season. The wild flowers, wiiich 
little C — 1 brings to me, are tinted with 
the rich autumn colors. Sadness steals 
down from the skies and pervades the 
air. The Lonely Human Soul is for- 
saken. All things speak of the coming 
of winter, of solitude, of death. Phil- 
osophy, faith, alone keep the Soul from 
sinking into despair. The Spirit falls but 
arises once more, standing erect with 
head upward toward the skies! "We 
count it death to falter, not to die." 

The Beauty August 12. My soul is intoxicated with 
of the the beauty of this morning, as one drunk 
Morning with a fine wine. There is not a cloud 
in the depths above. The sunshine falls 
over all, like a plenary indulgence. The 
air is cool. The winds are roaming 
abroad, fluttering branches and leaves, 
making exquisite little pictures in light 
and shade. All Nature is glistening, mov- 
ing, radiant. O to wander forth, far 
away into the mountains! 

8 



WITH NATURE 

August 13. Genius is the culmination, in Genius 
one individual, of the general progress of 
many preceding generations; but genius 
has its limitations. Its power to promul- 
gate truth cannot exceed the power of 
the constituents which go to make up the 
tendency of the thought of the age to 
which the genius may belong. 

August 15. Poetry awakens the mind Poetry 
from the slumber of the utilitarian and 
the commonplace. It awakens universal 
sympathy with all creatures and all 
things. Poetry broadens the spiritual 
horizon and gives perspective to life. 
With the poetic imagination, I see 
this little earth-ship sailing rhythmically 
through the blue ether, as she follows the 
sun in his vaster sweep through the 
starry spaces. I — who constitute but one 
atom of life in my one swift, ebbing 
moment of time — I transcend myself 
and gaze upon this picture of duration. 
It becomes as present a reality for me as 
though I endured with Time and Space, 
with worlds and systems. So does the 
poetic imagination lift up the mind into 
the realm of the god-like. 
Poetry sees persons and things as 
types, as classes, each one forming, as it 
were, lights and shadows, in the great 
Picture of Life in which are infinite 

9 



WITH NATURE 

Poetry gradations of color and form, not the 
least of which is without its due sig- 
nificance. 

Poetry strikes back into the first 
springs of existence, into the original 
purpose of Nature, by showing the com- 
mon-ness, the kinship of all. Poetry re- 
lates all things. She may be likened to 
the great, sympathetic, nervous system in 
the human body, whose function is to 
unite all the other systems together. 
Poetry is the voice of God singing the 
song of the evening star in the Soul. 
The farther the exact sciences pro- 
gress the more proofs do they give that 
the universe is a related whole. These 
truths were long antedated in the dreams 
and rhapsodies of the poets. Hence are 
poets called seers. They have the vision 
of the deepest realities — the spiritual 
significance of things, the deep things of 
Nature in their primeval simplicity. 
Hence true poetry is simple, strong. The 
artificial, the conventional, the frivolous 
have no part in her. Real poetry en- 
dures. 

Poetry sets the mind at equipoise. The 
poetic Soul is at peace with Nature. The 
old Hermits were poets at heart, else they 
could not have lived in those sublime 
solitudes of desert and mountain. 
The poetic mind knows the right pro- 

10 



WITH NATURE 

portions of things and disdains worldly 
ambition, finding joy in simplicity. The 
poet is independent of circumstance and 
convention, resting joyfully upon Nature, 
feeling her universal relations. 
Poetry meets Philosophy on the Heights; 
one flies thither on wings, the other 
toils up the crags, step by step, staff 
in hand — a pilgrim to the Shrine of 
Truth. Wordsworth sings of "Joy in 
widest commonalty spread," and Con- 
fucius declares, "With a few grains of 
rice, a cup of cold water, and my bended 
arm for a pillow, I still know joy." 
Poetry is not concerned with clothing 
and feeding mankind. She clothes and 
feeds the Soul with grace and beauty — 
in so far as the Soul can perceive and 
receive her truth into its own. Those 
who do not possess the poetic perception 
lose one of the highest and most exalting 
enjoyments of life. 

August 28. I have just finished reading Joan of Arc 
Michelet's "Joan of Arc." It is written 
simply and with poetic sensibility. Strip 
the story as one may of legend and mir- 
acle, there is left the fact that a young 
girl, in the ignorance of peasant life, 
was moved by inner power to lead the 
armies of her people, to effect the cor- 
onation of her king, to die heroically, un- 

11 



WITH NATURE 

dismayed by persecution and desertion. 

August 29. The life story of that pure, 
heroic soul, la Pucelle, lingers with me, 
profiting my soul. It is a living poem of 
unselfishness, heroic endurance and fidel- 
ity. Shall I not strive to be as she was, 
in that last moment when she forgot her 
own cruel fate; forgot the flames which 
were waiting for her? Her soul was 
filled only with a sublime consideration 
for the Dominican priest who attended 
her on the scaff'old, imploring him to save 
himself, when she saw the executioner 
put the torch to the pile! 
The "Odor September 4. O the peace, the light, 
of Sanctity'' the piety, of this morning! All so still, 
so perfect, as though the earth were 
adoring the heavens. The "odor of 
sancity" over all — a spiritual essence 
from out the infinite Spirit of the uni- 
verse. The fragrance from my ripened 
grapes is the physical correspondence of 
this heavenly essence, which penetrates 
the hidden recesses of my soul, awak- 
ening the spirit to "make melody before 
the Lord." 

Bain September 10. I listened this morning to 
the music of the raindrops — the regular 
tramp, tramp of the footsteps of the rain, 
as it were an army of tiny beings on the 
roof and on the ground. I hear the liquid 

12 



WITH NATURE 

splashing into puddles beneath the cot- 
tage eaves. It is the dripping from the 
grapevines. The birds have gone some- 
where for shelter, I know not where. 
Seldom do I hear a single chirp. All 
other sounds are lost in the music of the 
rain. 

I wish to get as nearly outdoors as pos- 
sible. I sit on the porch beneath an 
umbrella, for the roof leaks. I wish to 
get as near to the rain as possible without 
being soaked. I watch the soft, steel-blue 
tints, begot of rain and mist, that have 
come over the landscape. In what tender 
colors do they paint all Nature! A lovely 
picture, full of peace and trembling with 
life. 

September 11. Is unconscious Nature, in Preconscious 

tree and stock and stone, nearer to "Pre- Nature 

conscious" Nature which lies back of this 

shifting "Maia," than is conscious man 

who, though higher in the scale of life, 

yet by virtue of his very consciousness 

and power of choice, is farther removed 

from the immediate workings of the Pre- 

conscious? For man's activities are 

mediate through his perceptions and 

will. 

Will man ever progress so far as to 

meet the other end of the great circle of 

Life and, by means of his perfected per- 

13 



WITH NATURE 

ceptions and will, come into perfect 
union with — intelligent realization of — | 
the Pre-conscious? 

Nature September 13. Nature seems to pause, as 
at Pause though swooning from the excess of 
"mellow fruitfulness" with which she has 
crowned orchard, garden, field and for- 
est. A breathless stillness is over all as 
though some cherished purpose were 
now fulfilled and earth rested in quiet 
joy after the days of showers, mists and 
damp. This peace, this quiet joy, sink 
deep into my soul, calming and purify- 
ing. O to be as Nature is, bountiful, 
modest, loving, patient, never-failing. 

Morning September 18. The sun is silently mount- 
ing up the eastern sky. Millions of dew- 
drops glisten on the grass, as though 
some munificent squanderer had thrown 
diamonds, sapphires and rubies there. I 
hear the music of the cowbells from dis- 
tant roads and fields where kine are 
grazing. The air, pure and stimulating 
as nectar for soul and body, gently flut- 
ters the little leaves. The death-songs of 
the autumn crickets and other insects 
keep up a melancholy monotony, a sort 
of fugue in the music of Nature. The 
birds are silent save that at rare inter- 
vals I hear the jocund whistle of the red- 
bird, or the cheerful voice of some other 

14 



WITH NATURE 

"Little Brother." I hear the dreamy hum- 
ming of the bees, sipping my ripened 
grapes. The sound affects my imagina- 
tion similarly to the sound of the human 
hive, heard at a distance, to give the 
poetic perspective. 

September 29. What capacity have I for a Dreamer 
accomplishing any work in life? What 
is Nature's purpose in regard to me? 
What was I made to do, to achieve? 
There is no lack of aspiration — the 
writer, the artist, the musician — can I 
be any one of these? With chagrin I own 
my incapacity. I have no powers of 
composition, of construction. I am not 
original, creative, giving form to ideas; 
only a dreamer; yet daring, courageous, 
profound, vague, illimitable, poetic. 

September 30. A blue dome above me. Autumn Sky 
as I sit outdoors, flecked over by little, 
white, woolly clouds in flocks, like sheep 
grazing in heavenly pastures. The air is 
cool, still, full of sunshine that says, "It 
is autumn." 

October 8. I find that each person of The Poet 
talent has only his own limited powers ^* Protean 
of perception and little stock of truths, 
on hearing which, all is said. It is not so 
with the poet. He is ever new and re- 
freshing, because creative; he is protean, 
like Nature herself. The poet is her 

15 



WITH NATURE 
favorite child; to whom she has given 
perpetual youth — the power of being ever 
born again. 

TheJReturn October 9. The birds have returned of 
of ih€ Birds late. During the latter part of the sum- 
mer their songs were hushed. I hear, 
first one, then another little friend of last 
spring. How glad I am to welcome them 
back! How much consolation they bring 
me! Their sweet notes stimulate the 
poetic imagination to its happiest mood, 
whereby the heart is refreshed and glad- 
dened by visions of beauty and peace. 

Octoler October 10. It is warmer today. I sit 
out of doors. The sky has a paler blue 
with here and there thin, feathery cloud- 
lets, one shaped like a long, slender 
plume. The winds are stirring, rustling 
the dead leaves about me, like memories 
of lost hopes. The redbird sings in a 
near tree. Earlier, a flock of partridges, 
with a great, rushing, whirring sound, 
flew into the osage orange hedge, near 
my cottage, to remain but a few moments, 
when, with much whistling to each other 
and great excitement and fluttering of 
wings, off" they flew to the mountain. 

No Drones October 14. Everyone ought to wish to 
add something to the world's store of 
wealth. Those who have their living 
without working ought to satisfy the 

16 



WITH NATURE 

claims of justice by doing a certain 
amount of free work for the world. 
No one should be a drone, an idler, a 
mere consumer. Everyone ought to do 
his share of production for the privilege 
of living and enjoying life in this palace 
of the sky. 

October 15. An ideal October day! The The Peace 
sky is poetical — giving expression to of the STcy 
spiritual realities in the forms of beauty. 
It is a tender blue, mild, temperate, pas- 
sionless; looking down upon a distracted 
world like a great, calm face, quieting the 
hot, restless soul of man gone mad with 
strife and passion. O beautiful Face! 
look down into this heart and in thy 
smile send quietness, peace, joy. 

October 16. The sky is one solid, light- Visitors 
grey color. No sunshine. The birds are 
singing as though it were spring. The air 
is still. One tiny Little Brother tripped 
into my cottage this morning where 
I was alone, lying on the couch. He 
hopped from chair to chair, with ex- 
quisite grace and airy motion. I felt 
glad of his gentle, silent presence. I 
wished he might approach close to me, 
but I did not know in what manner to 
act so as not to frighten him. Soon, 
however, some noise outside frightened 
him and away he flew. 

17 



WITH NATURE 

Little C — 1 came to my cottage yester- 
day and sang for me: — 

"The hills, 

The beautiful hills 

The — - hills"— etc. 

The child voice, the slim little figure, 
the look of innocence on his face, his 
rustic simplicity, made a picture not to 
be forgotten. 

Chrysanthemums and nasturtiums are 
blooming. Little C — 1 keeps me supplied 
with them. 

Sleep atid November 19. What does the condemned 
Be-awakening man dream of? Is sleep to him a bit of 
to Pain oblivion? When he awakens, is it diffi- 
cult for him to realize again his terrible 
doom? Is it torture, this often repeated 
experience of oblivion and re-awakening 
to the consciousness of a cruel fate? 
The Soul's experience is similar to 
this. She falls asleep. She forgets in 
dreams. She is once more free and 
happy. She awakens. She arises. The 
old Pain says: "Good morning," takes 
her by the hand, remains close with her 
all day. Oh, when will the hour arrive 
for the Soul to stand erect, once more 
free? 



18 



Transplantation 

The Soul is 

uprooted from the place of care and 

grief and planted again in the 

new soil of increasing 

health, hope, joy , 




TRANSPLANTATION 

January 4, 1890. The hour of dawn of TheBawn 
the Day of Health approaches. The long, of Faith 
black, painful Night is passed. A great 
faith, a great trust in the power of uni- 
versal Good-will, the Cosmic Power, God's 
life — call it what you will — fills the 
Lonely Human Soul as water fills a well. 
This universal Good-will, by means of 
faith built on reason, will "Renew my 
youth like the Eagle," will "Heal all my 
diseases," will "Restore my soul." Did 
not Jesus say to the sick one made well: 
"Thy faith hath made thee whole?" 
The Lonely Human Soul stands upon 
the threshold of a new and higher life. 
Power flows in, intellectual, moral, phys- 
ical. The days of apprenticeship are 
over. The life of the master-workman 
will commence. The horizon widens 
in every direction. The Lonely Human 
Soul is the child of God, consecrated to 

21 



TRANSPLANTATION 

do his will. Is this presumption, or is it 
true humility? The latter surely, be- 
cause the Soul acknowledges that all her 
power is God's power in her. 

Snoiv January 18. There was a snow storm 
last night. There is a spirit of purifica- 
tion abroad embodied in this spotless 
snow. O to receive that imprint upon 
the heart! 

Joy a State January 31. These are days of "silent 
of Sanity demand" and of prophecy. Quoth Saint 
Anthony, "To be built up in virtue, one 
must be built up in tears." That is the 
first stage — the preparation — but to ar- 
rive at spiritual maturity the Soul's ever- 
lasting dome must be built up of joy. 
To be joyful is the only sane temper in 
which to live. It is the temper of Nature 
and of her prophet and seer — the poet. 
Those persons who go through life fret- 
ful, peevish, discontented are partially 
insane. The poet is the sanest of men. 
Wordsworth sang of life as joy, in "Daf- 
fodils" and "Early Spring." Emerson had 
the sarne temperament of the poet. How 
glad he makes you feel; how plentiful he 
is to feed the Soul, like some old apple 
tree that loads the ground with fruit! 
Saint Paul tells us of joy as one of the 
"fruits of the spirit." It is the purpose 
of the universe that every creature be 

22 



TRANSPLANTATION 
full of innocent joy, merry, gleeful joy, 
like that which Beethoven gives in his 
Pastoral Symphony. 

February 1. When a plant is trans- Transplanting 
planted, it passes through a trying time. 
It has been uprooted from its old familiar 
spot. At first it is weakened until the 
roots take firm hold upon the new soil 
and it begins to draw force from the air. 
If the climate is better adapted to the 
nature and requirements of the plant 
than the old one, the plant will become 
stronger, with increased power of 
flowering and fruition. The Soul is now 
passing through the trying time of trans- 
plantation. She is uprooted from the 
place of care and grief and planted again 
in the new soil of increasing good health, 
hope, joy. Life will be richer and 
happier. 

February 8. Happiness as an end is in- Innocent 
sufficient and may lead to vice; hence ^^^V 
the utilitarian ideal is not the correct 
one. The purely moral motive, without 
the emotion of happiness, is incomplete 
and unsatisfying. Though great and 
heroic it fails to meet all the require- 
ments of the heart and mind. A perfect 
ideal should meet every aspiration of the 
Soul. Such is the ideal of innocent joy. 
The poet in his rhapsody knows innocent 

23 



TRANSPLANTATION 

Innocent joy. Robert Browning looked out on the 
Joy world and declared: — 

"I report as a man may of God's work, 
all's love and all's law." 



Again he sings: 

"Life with all it yields of joy and woe, 

And hope and fear, 

Is just our chance o' the prize of learn- 
ing love — 

How love might be, hath been indeed, 

and is — " 
And Edwin Arlington Robinson: 

"Love's complete communion is the 
end 

Of anguish to the liberated man." 

Where all is love, there all is innocent. 
The world must be infinite joy to satisfy 
an ever increasing thirst for an ever re- 
newed state of innocent joy — offering 
new fields of discovery, of fresh thought 
and feeling. 

The ideal of innocent joy leads to con- 
structive work. Its tendencies are funda- 
mental and rejuvenating. There is no 
medicine to be compared to the medicine 
of joy. Grief is destructive. Innocent 
joy can be attained only by obedience to 
the spiritual law. The practice of virtue 
tends to joy. 

February 14. The air is soft and vibrat- 

24 



TRANSPLANTATION 

ing with birds' songs. I hear the red- A Day Like 
bird. The sun shines gently amid light- Distant 
moving clouds. There is a manner of ^u^^ic 
grace, an air of tenderness about the day 
that comes to the heart like distant 
music. It is the season for new-born 
love, for tender sighs, for pensive moods. 

March 29. Easter. Criminals ought to ''Do Justly 
be treated as patients in a hospital. They o^^ J^ove 
should not be treated as moral beings re- Mercy" 
sponsible for their acts. They are chil- 
dren needing to be educated into moral- 
ity, not by means of the knout, of ball 
and chain, of solitary confinement, or of 
any other cruel method, but by teaching 
them truth, honesty, fidelity, justice, self- 
control, love, forgiveness, mercy. By in- 
justice you can not make a just man; by 
unkindness a kind man; by hatred and 
passion a loving man. If it w^ere so then 
there would be no truth in the command: 
"Do justly and love mercy." 

April 1. With closed eyes I was lying on There 
my couch. On opening my eyes the ^* « Light 
white light from the sky flooded me with ^f ^^9^^^^ 
brightness and purity. The following 
thoughts rose up out of my heart: — 

There is a Light of lights. 

Oh, that my eyes could see! 
Only the light of the sun 

Is visible to me. 

25 



TRANSPLANTATION 

There is a Liglit of lights, 

Oh, that my eyes could see! 
It is the Light of the Soul, 
And only the Soul can see. 
The Bitter At night the Soul had drunk of the! 
bitter of Verlaine's poeme: 

"Les sanglots long 
Des violons 
De I'autumne; 
Blessent mon coeur, 
D' une langueur 
Monotone. 
"Tout suffocant 
Et bleme, quand 
Sonne I'heure; 
Je me souviens 
Des jours anciens 
Et je pleure. 

"Et je m'en vais 
Au vent mauvais, 
Qui m'emporte 
De ci, de la, 
Pareil a la 
Feuille morte." 
Spring and April 20. The spring is fairly with us. 
Signs of I see the first tender, yellowish-green tint 
Physical stealing forth on the trees in the garden. 
rrogress jjig jjij-^g ^j.^ j^y ^^jjy companions. I 
wonder if they know it! Their songs 
are my music. Ah, thou dear Pine Tree! 
26 



TRANSPLANTATION 

I forget thee not and thy soft murmurs. 
My old Friend, the great aspen tree, 
budded and blossomed last spring and 
now stands dead near my window. It 
will give me the music of the humming 
jbees among its blossoms not this time, 
nor any more. I miss thy consolations, 
dear old Tree! 

Ah, the poor body! How is it with 
thee? Ailing, ailing; better than two 
months ago; better than one month ago, 
yet still benumbed by disease, rendering 
it perilous to walk out. 
The Soul is striving to conform to the 
laws of Nature in every habit, yielding 
up herself, more and more, to the con- 
trol of spiritual law. 

June 1. When the Soul becomes obedi- The Soul 
ent to Nature, she enters upon her real Obedient 
life. When she comes into unison with to Nature 
the Eternal through obedience to the law, 
in which alone she shall find her freedom 
by the emptying of self through renuncia- 
tion to be refilled with universal life, she 
then becomes creative, as the universe is 
creative. "Drift, drift," says Emerson, 
"the current knows the way." 

June 26. The universe is good. When y^^ jjniverse 
you do evil you are using some of the j^ Qood 
force of the universe to make yourself 
unlike the common — i. e. universal — na- 

27 



TRANSPLANTATIOIS 

ture. And there is a reacting power ii 
the nature of things which forces evil t( 
become finally transmuted into good, thu; 
ever preserving the balance of the whole 
When the mind becomes rational 
which is its natural tendency undei 
favoring conditions, the desire to do evi 
is eliminated, for the rational mind pan 
takes of the nature of the universe and is 
in ever-growing harmony with universa 
order. Life does not desire death, noj 
does health desire pain, nor does th< 
heart desire to be hated and spurned. 
Moving with June 27. The secret of life lies ir 
Night and humble, faithful, patient doing. Ragt 
Mornmg ^^^ despair but destroy us, as do inn 
patience and negligence. 
All things must grow. Nothing may b( 
forced to its perfect fruition. PatientI 
unfailing duty done, is alone capable ol 
accomplishing good results. To gain im 
the long run, to have power, each person 
must take his appointed place in the 
great order, and move along with night 
and morning, with the seasons and the 
stars, be as they are, regular, never-fail- 
ing. To the silent, faithful act belongs 
victory. 

Life Is Good June 28. It is a high standpoint to reach 
when pain and sorrow are seen to be 
good as well as pleasure and joy. It is 

28 



TRANSPLANTATION 

the uses of things which constitute their 
worth. The noble mind will transmute 
all things into good, seeing the uses of 
pain and sorrow as well as of pleasure 
and joy. The noble mind is not tainted 
with pessimism; it sees that life is good 
and that there is no blot to mar the 
beauty of it. 

July 3. The Soul is passing out of the The SouVs 
old life, into the new; from out the old New World 
material world of vanity, of desire for 
admiration, of pride, of selfishness, of 
luxury, of frivolity, of ignorance, of ex- 
clusiveness, of idleness, of sensuality — 
out, out, far, far out — into the distant 
new world of Renunciation, of self- 
abandonment, of common Brotherhood 
with all; not with man only, but with 
animals, birds, insects, fishes, stocks and 
stones; yea, with the very elements them- 
selves; into the new world of work, of 
seriousness, of plain living; the new 
world of knowledge; into the higher 
world of intelligence; of the Spirit, the 
tender, the true, the discriminating, per- 
ceiving world of the Divine! 

July 9. I love trees. They feed me with Trees 
fruits. They warm me with fragrant 
wood fires. They are my friends and the 
friends of my race. 
I love trees because we are the chil- 

29 



TRANSPLANTATION 

Trees dren of one common parent, because we 
have one common nature and one com- 
mon destiny. 

I love trees because they are good; be- 
cause they are kind, because they are 
modest, because they have dignity of 
character. How hospitable they are to 
the birds and the little squirrels, giving 
them homes! They give food without 
money and without price. In the sum- 
mer days how pleasant are their shadows 
where the weary may find rest. They 
are Quakers, for peace abideth with 
them. They are philosophers, saints and 
poets. 

Trees are the friend of man. He could 
not find a home upon the earth were it 
not for trees. They could live without 
him, but not he without them. They 
call the gracious rains together, bringing 
harvests to their ungrateful brother 
whose brutal hand is too often laid upon 
their beauty. 

Can words describe the grace of their 
myriad branches, or the tenderness of 
those arms, garlanded and veiled with 
leaves, outstretched with longing to em- 
brace the sun? What shadows, what 
colors, what motion — live paintings done 
by the hand of Nature — where imagina- 
tion may nestle with birds or skip from 
branch to branch like squirrels. Happy 

30 



TRANSPLANTATION 

lovers seek those shadows for their tryst. Trees 
When the branches are bare and strip- 
ped, they are like the widowed heart. 
They point upward to the sky like 
prayers. 

The violin with its human voice comes 
out of the heart of trees. It is a revela- 
tion of their kinship with man when 
these, his silent brothers — silent now no 
longer, but, with an eloquence exceeding 
that of man himself — give voice to the 
imprisoned poetry of his soul. 
Trees are the friend of man in his 
Religion as in his Art. They give con- 
solation to the Soul when burdened with 
its weight of bitter agony. Christ went 
to the trees in His hour of bloody sweat. 
Elijah and the other Prophets and the 
Saints of old went to the trees seeking 
rest. Trees were the only witnesses to 
the Buddha's act of renunciation in his 
solemn hour of enlightenment. 
Trees are the comforters and compan- 
ions of mankind. Philosophers, saints 
and poets are not unmindful of them. 
They know that trees are a company of 
peacemakers. They know that Christ, 
preaching the Sermon on the Mount, in 
the midst of trees, included them as joint 
heirs to the beatitude, "Blessed are the 
peacemakers, for they shall be called the 
Children of God." 

31 



TRANSPLANTATION 

The Wren July 10. Thou tiny, fluttering thing, 
quivering with life and joy, the music of 
thy chatter tells me of thy simple, happy 
life. Thou singest not of heroic deeds, 
nor of the heart's sorrow. Thy days are j 
passed in sprightly chatterings to all live i 
things about thee. Thou dost enliven me, 
and I love thee and am thankful. Thy 
gentle virtues are suited to thy home 
mission and its tranquil rounds. Thou 
art a commonsense philosopher and no 
mystic wdth deep vision. Lightly dost 
thou sit on the bough — lightly poised as 
the bee in mid-air. Light is thy burden. 
Thou dost take no thought for the mor- 
row. Thou art a true Christian. Thou 
dost trust thy Heavenly Father for "all 
of these things which shall be added unto 
thee." Thou makest me glad when I 
listen to thy music as it ripples out in a 
tiny stream of happy life. O, Jenny 
Wren; 0, Jenny Wren! 

Joy in All July 19. Joy goes through the world in 
Guises all guises. She comes anywhere and at 
any time. Sunday morning in the solemn 
hymn-tones of the children in the church 
the Soul finds the human longing for a 
purer life and intimations of a love faith- 
ful beyond the grave. She finds it in the 
picture painted on the blue sky by the 
tinkling dances of the aspen leaves; or 

32 



TRANSPLANTATION 

in the soft wavings of the palms of the 
Paradise tree; or in the symmetry of the 
spider's silver-spun web shining in the 
sun under the cottage eaves. 

August 1. Of all the months of the year August 
I most love August. It is the season of 
the harvest. It is the fullness of time in 
the year. The day of preparation is past. 
The labor is done. The waiting is over. 
Nature is banqueting on the fruits of the 
Fullness-of-Time. Joy and Peace sit be- 
side her — a seraphic company! My heart 
longs to partake of that perfect feast, for 
then I shall be satisfied. 
August is the time of the perfect 
fruition sprung from the wedding of the 
winter with the spring, as the child is the 
consummation of the perfect union of 
man with woman. A marriage without a 
child is as a broken ring, an unfinished 
circle — a year without an August. 
In August, not the least of a tiny weed, 
not a wild tree, not a vine, which bears 
not its seed-child upon its bosom. Not 
a bird or insect but has fulfilled its 
proper function and is receiving the re- 
ward of love. Nature is then August in 
all the fullness of Maternity. She drinks of 
the wine of the Fullness-of-Time. From 
out the depths of her great heart is heard 
the Song of the Seasons: "Now is the 

33 



TRANSPLANTATION 

Hour come; now are the hopes fulfilled; 
now is the time of the consummation. 
O blessed and consecrated moment, the 
Sabbath Day of Nature — her festival of- 
Rest and earthly type of eternal Peace! ^ 
The Soul will await the coming of the i 
Fullness-of-Time — the coming of August I 
in the circle of her life. Shall she ever 
sit at that banqueting table, and with Joy 
and Peace drink of that cup? She will 
trust and wait, knowing that every event 
comes in its due season; that the moment 
she shall deserve happiness, that moment 
she shall receive it. Kant sublimely 
teaches that man ought not to strive for 
happiness, but so live as to be worthy 
of it. 

Joy, August 2. What a comedy is life often 
Not Hell seen to be! How many foolish beliefs 
and customs mislead mankind, hither and 
thither, as the Will-O'-the-Wisp fantastic- 
ally misleads the lonely night wayfarer 
in the story book! Think of a company 
gathered together to sing doleful songs 
about the vanity of life and the torments 
of hell, relegating all joy to some future, 
possible heaven. Whereas the truth is, 
life is no vanity, the "Preacher" notwith- 
standing, save only as one may make it 
so. Life is a divine existence of un- 
speakable worth and there is "Joy in 

34 



TRANSPLANTATION 

widest commonalty spread." As to the 
so much be-preached and be-sung hell 
torments, they exist only in the imagina- 
tion. The reality is that God is a god of 
love and the visible universe is an out- 
burst his own divine joy, not w^rath. 

August 3. I am reading Rousseau's Con- Eousseau 
fessions. What a book it is! What a 
revelation of the heart and of life! I ad- 
mire his ability to stand outside the pas- 
sions, as it were, when passing judgment 
upon himself. It must have required 
moral courage; or was it simply that ex- 
ceptional force which comes with genius, 
to show the naked truth; to portray the 
soul "with all its imperfections on its 
head" to the outside world? 
What a study the book is! What in- 
tricacies, what subtle variations of char- 
acter were bound up together in that 
one human being named Jean Jacques 
Rousseau! How vividly he shows the 
power of circumstance and incident to 
influence and mould character and life! 
What a gift of penetrating expression he 
has, which enables his words to get into 
the mind so that the reader seems to be- 
come, for the time being, Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, himself, living again through 
scenes and incidents in that remarkable 
life. What delicate humor, what a lov- 

35 



transplantation! 

able nature, what a singular being! What 
extreme opposites brought together in 
one personality — voluptuous yet loving 
the pure, fickle yet faithful, lying yet de- 
voted to truth, thieving yet honest! He 
seemed a living Aeolian harp responding 
to every note of life about him. Could 
any other pen tell the same things with 
such skill and delicacy in the use of 
language? 

Rousseau did not prostitute his reason 
by using sophistrj^ to condone the errors 
into which his inflammable temperament 
and the customs of the times led him. 
He judged and condemned himself. 
Could a bad man prefer the compan- 
ionship of streams, flowers, the sky and 
his own thoughts in the country quiet, 
to the excitements of a life in Paris? 
It was his misfortune to live in an age 
of loose sexual morals and manners; even 
so, I believe that had he early met and 
married the woman whom he could truly 
love he would have been faithful. 

Under August 11. I come down to be alone 
the Trees with the trees, to see how the sunlight 
and the shadows gild and paint them as 
they are moved by the gentle summer 
breeze; to be with the birds, now almost 
songless, to watch their swift and silent 
flight from tree to tree; to look at the 

36 



TRANSPLANTATION 

blue sky above me where sails a great 
white cloud; to watch the matchless grace 
of the little leaves as they dance to the 
music of the winds. I came out, stagger- 
ing beneath my load of pain, to live one 
hour with Beauty in the midst of this 
sweetness, that my soul may swim out into 
the ocean of spiritual perception, wash 
and be clean, strengthened and restored 
by these living waters of contemplation. 

August 23. It is verj^ warm. The The Happiness 
turkeys have sought the shadows under of a Double 
a clump of small trees where the shade Existence 
is dense. They are picking and cleaning 
their feathers. Occasionally I hear them 
peeping to each other in low tones. 
How I wish that I, too, could so order 
my life as to trust wholly to Nature for 
every provision, as do these poor fowls — 
wiser than I! I desire a life rid of all 
artificial arrangements; to live out of 
doors, without house or possessions, as 
did Saint Anthony. But could I live 
alone as he did? No. I am not great 
enough. The heart bleeds in secret for a 
human comrade. As did Rousseau, so 
does the Soul crave for the happiness of 
a double existence in the perfect union 
of two souls in one; yet, like Amiel, noth- 
ing that might give offense to the Ideal 
in her would satisfy. 

37 



TRANSPLANTATION 

Alone, the Soul knows not happiness. 
How was it with the grand old Saint and 
Father of Hermits? 

The Tragedy August 26. I look out on the world 
of Life What do I see? I see the writhing worm 
trodden down upon the roadside. I see 
the man of truth and courage languish- 
ing in the dungeon — Christ nailed to the 
tree; Socrates condemned to drink the 
fatal cup. I see the untimely dropping' 
of buds and young fruits. I see the trust- 
ing heart betrayed and left desolate. I 
see every creature preyed upon by some 
other creature. 

Innocent Joy August 27. Innocent joy is the realiza- 
a Phoenix tion of the fable of the phoenix. It is 
the only state that possesses the inherent 
power of renewing itself. All other states 
wear themselves out; joy alone persists, 
because it is a state of holiness, or, 
wholeness. Joy is the essence of Eternal 
Life. 

Bope August 28. The nature of Hope is child- 
and Faith like. She breathes of the innocence of 
ignorance. She knows not Truth, hence 
Watts represents her as blindfolded. 
There lingers about her garments the 
scent of wild flowers, and the fresh air 
of the fields of childhood's immaturity. 
She is light-hearted and merry as the 
child is playful and sunny-tempered. 
38 



TRANSPLANTATION 

Faith is god-like. Hope is mortal, 
wayward. She frolics beside us in our 
hours of ease, and in our seasons of 
weakness we need this sunny child of 
the human breast to chase aw^ay our 
gloom, to soothe the days of peevishness 
and care. Do not take this sweet child 
from us! We need her smiles, her inno- 
cent prattle in the April seasons of life, 
before the Soul has grown strong enough 
to journey up the Heights reached only 
by the austere virtues of Reason, by 
strong souls in seasons of achievement, 
there to grasp the hand of Faith as she 
stands alone, sublime, crowned by the 
everlasting spaces and the stars. 

October 17. I heard the Boston Sym- Beethoven'. 
phony Orchestra, in concert, on the even- Eighth 
ing of the 15th at Memorial Hall. What Symphony 
were my emotions on entering that tem- 
ple dedicated to the memory of those 
who had fought and died fighting against 
my beloved count*^y, my beloved South- 
land! Did the Soul receive a jar? While 
listening to Beethoven's Eighth Sym- 
phony I freely forgave. Reconciliation 
passed into my heart, not alone to the 
soldiery dead, but to those also who had 
cast the mud of brutal insult upon the 
Soul's fairest part. Peace descended, 
clasped ray hand and led me up! 

39 



TRANSPLANTATIO 
Beethoven said, "He to whom my music 
reveals its whole significance is liftet 
up above all the sorrows of the world.' 
The Holy OCTOBER 18. I close not my window 
Stars curtains, for I will not shut out the mosi 
that I can see of Beauty. In the dav 
there are the sky, the sun and the clouds. 
At night there are the moon, the holy 
stars and the mysteries of space. 
And why are the stars called "holy?'"! 
Because they bring truths. Aye, the littlef 
earth, the gravel, and the sand brings 
truths also. Nay, but the stars bring: 
truths illimitable, infinite. Therefore 
are they called holy. 

To Best February 18, 1891. To rest means to 
stop all conscious, voluntary activities,, 
withdrawing attention from everything; 
and turning the whole mind toward the 
realization of the truth that there is no 
life save the divine life which flows 
into and fills all things continuallv, and 
then, just to let that life flow in and 
fill you consciously. 
AMetJwdical February 19. The thought of a methodi- 
se cal life grows within the Soul. What 
then shall be her life-work? It must 
be one for which she may be fitted by 
nature and opportunity. She believes 
that she belongs to the dumb species. 
What then can she work at? Nature 
40 



TRANSPLANTATION 

has given her the great heart overflow- A Methodical 
ing with love and compassion for all Life 
things. Though born and reared in the 
so-called "aristocratic" station in life, 
her heart turns from that to the so-called 
"common" people with love and sym- 
pathy. It is their need she understands; 
their joy and sorrow which touch her 
most deeply. She often shrinks from 
contact with the "upper" classes — those 
"lesser barbarians," as Carlyle calls them 
— because of their frivolous, not to say 
brutal, pastimes; their self-assumed su- 
periority over the great mass of the 
people. The folly, the injustice of it 
all comes over her like a flood that will 
sweep the last vestige of it from her 
own heart. 

The great Mother has enwrapped the 
Soul in an atmosphere of ideal harmony, 
the temper of which is all too sensitive 
for the ordinary associations of life. 
Circumstance and soiiow have cut the 
ties of the usual family experience. The 
great Mother's voice is heard calling, 
"Thou art separated that thou shalt do 
thy work for my desolate children. 'The 
fields are white to the harvest and the 
laborers are few.' " 

March 5. The evening star shining in 
glory, undimmed by the crescent moon 

41 



TRANSPLANTATION 
To the — the evening star and the Lonely Human 
Condemned Soul. Beauty and Silence are the re- 
ligion of the hour. 

The Soul bows her head. She asks to be 
shown her work. Nature declares it 
shall be in prisons where the condemned 
sit alone, friendless and unpitied. 
*'Go thou to them. Be thou the friend 
of the friendless. Take thy free gift of 
pity and love. Show thou the face of 
Truth, that looking upon her the sorrow- 
ful may be healed and made glad." 
O God! canst thou give strength for this? 
The Soul sensitive to every impression, 
even to suffering keenly from ordinary 
contacts in life, can she become strong 
to enter the condemned cell and to have 
fellowship with criminals? Courage 
abandons her. 

"The criminal is thy brother, thy poor, 
untaught, hungry, naked brother. For 
him, as for thee, the evening star shines 
in glory, and Beauty and Silence to- 
gether descend from the heavens upon 
the earth." 

The Bay March 6. The state of ill health can not 

of Peace last — the state of ill-at-easement of Soul 

at Band and body. All will be well when the 

Soul shall arrive at her proper relations 

with Life — when perfect connection is 

made between the spirit and Spirit. 



42 



TRANSPLANTATION 

The day of peace is at hand — the day 
of health, of silent joy, of great working 
power — when eyes and hands and lips 
shall become as active as hitherto have 
been only the brain and the abounding, 
suffering heart. Ah, the Soul has striven 
all her life to reach such a harmony of 
living! How far short has she fallen! 
How often sunk into the mire of folly! 
to recover herself always, never to be 
wholly lost; as Christian fell into the 
Slough of Despond, yet got out on the 
side toward the Celestial City. 

March 7. Nature makes nothing for Beauty 
Beauty's sake, simply to be beautiful. 
She aims not at Beauty, for Beauty is 
not outside of Nature. She makes a 
flower, a tree, a sunset, a man, a w^oman. 
There is need for the thing, therefore 
it is produced and therefore it is beau- 
tiful; for Nature is Beauty. Beauty 
means perfect adaptatio.1, perfect fitness 
to use. There is purpose in the color 
on a rose leaf, or in the milky whiteness 
of a lily's throat. 

March 8. I am filled with joy on see- Branches 
ing a green branch waved by the breeze; and Stars 
or when looking at the stars as they 
swing in space, moved by God's thought, 
my soul stands awed; one is beautiful, 
the other is sublime. The one I under- 

43 



TRANSPLANTATION 
stand; the other is beyond my compre- 
hension, being lost in the mists and mys- 
teries of infinite magnitude and distance. 
Walt April 10. Walt Whitman died on the 
Whitman's 25th of March— a great soul gone else- 
Death where! 

Goethe April 12. In his loves Goethe expressed I 
the Romantic spirit in its extreme stage; 
that is to say, individual experience was i 
given full sway without regard to con- 
trol of self or justice toward others; 
which is the opposite of the moral soul 
who, strong in his individuality, yet 
recognizes the claims of others and is 
all the stronger for so doing; who is the 
truly social character, regarding himself 
not as the isolated god of life to think 
and act according as his own sweet will 
may elect from moment to moment, but 
rather as an organic member of one uni- 
versal, divine system of life. Surely the 
maxims of the old prophets have no part 
in Goethe's loves — "To do justly and to 
love mercy." He showed neither justice 
nor mercy to the unfortunate women 
whom he adored for one passing hour 
only to desert them the next. 
Love should be the outcome, the flower- 
ing of a soul that is true to itself; true 
to the principles of the spiritual life; 
faithful as are the stars in their courses. 

44 



TRANSPLANTATION 

April 19. How wonderful is the human The Body 
body! What a marvelous apparatus for 
the uses of the indwelling spirit! What 
admirable adjustments! What conveni- 
ent appliances! The feet to the legs, the 
toes to the feet, the nails to the toes. 
The eyes to the brain — that marvelous 
workshop where is wrought out the 
ideas. Finer workmanship is done there 
than is executed with rare skill by gold 
and silver artisan, by miniature painter, 
or by the grinder of great lenses where- 
with to see that which eye hath not 
seen. 

I am awed when I think of the number- 
less cycles that were needed in which 
to complete this perfect shape moulded 
by the indwelling spirit struggling for 
expression in the world. 

April 20. Life appears to us in mo- Great Truths 
ments which are alw^ays fleeting; but just 
as there is a perpetual daybreak, a per- 
petual noonday, a perpetual midnight as 
the earth wheels on her everlasting flight 
among the stars, so do there abide the 
Great Truths, although we see them not 
in the swift and changing thoughts of 
time. 

April 21. The Soul will say why it is The Ocean 
that she loves the ocean with so deep 
and undying love. It is because the 

45 



TRANSPLANTATION 
ocean is the symbol of her inner life — 
eternally restless, unfathomable, omnivo- 
rous, illimitable! 

The Storm ApmL 24. The day is fair, but within 
IsBaging the inner world — this human microcos- 
mos — the storm is raging — pain, weak- 
ness, sorrow\ The Soul will be faithful. 
She will say, "Though thou slay me, yet 
will I trust in thee." She will look to 
spiritual power for her ease, for her 
strength, for her consolation. In pain, 
yet she shall know quietness. In weak- 
ness, she shall have strength. In sorrow, 
she will kiss the cheek of joy. 
Butterflies July 28. This is the time of the butter- 
flies. I see them, with their great, black 
wings spotted over with yellow, flutter- 
ing and hovering over the sweet phlox 
blooms. I see the small, pure- white but- 
terflies, often two, sometimes three to- 
gether, seeming at play with each other, 
there is such whirling up and down, 
coming together in apparent kisses, flut- 
tering away again, and round and round 
each other, up and down, sideways, for- 
ward, backward, in some delicious dance 
of lightness, grace and joy. 

The Morning's August 22. I sit outdoors by the old 
Baptism of hedge, among the grasses all wet with 

Light and Life yesterday's rain. The Soul is beginning 
to hold herself erect, self-poised because 
46 



TRANSPLANTATION 

pivoted on God. The forces of Nature 
sustain me. I refuse to remain indoors. 
I need the outdoor communion — the 
morning's baptism of light and life from 
the open sky upon my naked soul. As 
regards the body, what are a few trifling 
sensations that try to force themselves 
upon my notice, to the inflowing of 
divine life of which I am conscious as 
filling my entire being. 

August 23. Great souls see divinity in Divinity in 
monotony; in plain and simple things. Monotony 
Kant was not bored by a monotonous 
life. He never went out of the district 
in which he was born, and he passed 
outwardly a monotonous existence, doing 
the same things day in and day out, as 
the sun and the moon and the earth do 
the same things. 

Only vacant minds are bored by monot- 
ony. It is themselves with whom they 
are bored. The mind rich in thought 
possesses not one kingdom only, but all 
kingdoms for its own. 

August 24. This growing into one-ness My Miracles 
with the universe: this being fitted to 
one's place in Nature — the infinite build- 
ing not made with hands — as the stone 
is chipped by the mason and fitted into 
its proper place in the human habita- 
tion: this swelling and bursting of the 

47 



TRANSPLANTATION 

spiritual seed-pod: this reaching out 
of the Soul's antennae to receive the 
thrill that comes from personal touch 
with the Spirit of the universe: these 
silent yet potent moments of revelation 
— ah, these are the miracles I believe in I 
The Soul who knows them has some- 
what to say, if she find words. 

The Little Hen September 7. I listen to the little hen 
as she sings her psalm of content, in one 
long-drawn crescendo note, followed by 
staccatos in quick succession. There is 
a rasping quality in her tone as though 
her throat were some rude violin made 
of a gourd, having the notes and pitch 
but not the timbre of the violin — as she 
sings her psalm of content. 

The Winter September 11. The Lonely Human Soul 

of the Heart is faltering today. Her world is the 

desolation of desolation and scarcely to 

be borne are the voices of the little 

crickets in the grass — harbingers of a 

yet distant winter. They tell of the 

winter of the heart where only echoes 

of Love's death-song may be heard. 

As One of September 12. Oh, may thy life with 

the Stars of "all its crimes upon thy head," with all 

Heaven j^g poor failures, yet become useful and 

shine out with the beauty of holiness, 

for thou dost not cease to "strive on 

with unswerving will:" even as the little 

48 



TRANSPLANTATION 

earth, though carrying upon her bosom 
her black load of sorrow and despair, 
yet shines to other worlds as one of the 
stars of heaven! 

September 13. The unconquerable pride The Pride 
and self-poise of genius — does it come and Self -Poise 
from the consciousness of possessing of Genius 
superior talents, or from excess of sensi- 
tiveness required for genius, or from 
both? The man or woman of genius — 
they do not seek confidence and affec- 
tion. Their natures silently make their 
demand. Where they do not receive, 
they are as an exile in the world, or as an 
alien shut out from his proper dominion. 
They can not go out to ask for that which 
yet they need. The kings of the earth 
may not become her beggars. 
September 14. My mind is omnivorous. 
My difficulty in acquiring knowledge is 
that I can hardly confine my attention to 
any one special study. I desire phil- 
osophy, the sciences, poetry, history, 
general literature all at once, with an 
impatience hard to control; in fact, I am 
troubled with an appetite greater than 
I have digestive powers to take charge of. 
September 15. Poetry engages intellect Poetry Versus 
and heart. Science engages only the in- 
tellect. Poetry needs facts, ideas and 
feelings, science only facts and ideas. 

49 



A Mind 
Omnivorous 



Science 



TRANSPLANTATION 
Poetry gives expression to emotions of 
love and reverence; science has no emo-j 
tions. Science looks at a flov^^er merely 
as an object and describes it, poetry sees 
a flow^er as a living being and recognizes i 
its relations in the bonds of sympathy 
to universal life. Science is the world 
of description, poetry the world of in- 
sight. Science knows not beauty. Poetry 
sees nothing apart from beauty. Science 
requires the analytic faculty, poetry the 
receptive. 

Sudden Events September 16. What we call sudden 
events are simply those moments when 
that which has already existed becomes 
visible. 



50 



Unfolding- 

The Soul stands upon 

the threshold of the next and final 

stage of a grand philosophical 

faith and vital religion . 




UNFOLDING 

Marcpi 5, 1892. The soul is awaking The Soul 
more and more fully. She is real-izing ^waTcing 
life; seeing that the divine nature of 
things is the only actuality. She is ar- 
riving at her freedom. Little now re- 
mains which can give her offense. For- 
merly she was vulnerable at all points, 
a poor, weak creature indeed, who might 
fall a prey at any moment to the smallest 
incident or accident of life — the fa- 
miliarity of a servant, or of a "common" 
person, any slight or neglect from a per- 
son of fashion, any act of injustice to- 
ward her, any under-valuation of her 
powers and personal qualities. None of 
these things can now humiliate or hurt 
the Soul. The barriers are gone. She 
now regards the "common" people as 
her equals. She desires their confidence 
and friendship. She desires to draw 
near to them as one of them. As for the 
person of fashion, he or she is seen to 

53 



UNFOLDING 

be only an object of pity, whom the 
Soul desires to lift out of the mire of 
folly and vanity if possible. Any act of 
injustice done to the Soul she regards 
as an opportunity for the practice of 
virtue, as a test whether or no she pos- 
sesses the true spirit of humility, if she 
can bear with patience and without bit- 
terness to be thought ill of, reminding 
herself how much nearer the truth such 
an estimation is than that conveyed by 
words of praise and flattery. For after 
all the Lonely Human Soul is but a poor 
creature struggling upward — a little wornf 
crawling up a mountain. To be spoken 
of as a worm struggling in the dust would 
be nearer the truth than to be called an 
angel of light. 

Soul April 22. A terrible impatience has 
Travail possessed the Soul of late. She feels that 
she can not wait for Nature to do her 
work. Shut within her room, which ap- 
pears as the cell of a convict, the sounds 
of outside life come to her. She hears 
the busy hammers of the house-builders, 
merry whistlings of young men and boys 
as they pass rapidly by. She knows, 
too, of the beauty of the springtime, of 
the bursting of the buds and the silent 
process of the robing of the trees. But 
none of these things are for her. Alone, 

54 



UNFOLDING 

walled in, she lies stretched upon her ^^"^ 
bed of pain. Travail 

The Soul will arise from this low plane 
of suffering and fear up to the Heights 
where Epictetus lived, where Emerson 
lived, w^here the Saints and Prophets of 
old lived. She will learn self-denial 
and a wise and loving obedience to the 
Cosmic Order. 

She will look up at the little picture of 
the sea hanging on the wall. She will 
gaze in imagination far out toward the 
Ocean of Truth upon whose shores she 
now stands. She will listen to the sound 
of the surf rolling in, bringing freedom 
and consolation to her here entangled in 
the net of sorrow. 

May 2. The voice of the oriole sounds 
like the cry of a lost spirit for its Beloved 
One. In the midst of the marvelous 
beauty of this season the Lonely Human 
Soul lies scourged and imprisoned. Shall 
not these stripes become her pathway 
leading up to the Verities? 

May 3. How is it possible to rise so com- 
pletely above bodily pain, unfavorable 
surroundings, and the heart's sorrow as 
to be not only equable but cheerful and 
at peace? 

Did Epictetus, did Socrates achieve this, 
or w^as it that they, too, only saw Truth 

55 



UNFOLDING 

which might be attained, yet fell short 
of it in their daily practice of virtue, 
just as I fall short? 

When the Soul lies in the Valley of 
Humiliation, every sound is interpreted 
by the imagination as a note of sadness. 
The voices of the mating birds wound 
her heart. The sounds of the noisy car- 
penters harrow the mind that has no 
home. The heavens which hold the sun 
of life's blessings, sink beneath ,the 
horizon, and the night-side alone is vis- 
ible, without a star of consolation, and 
the storm rages, and the Soul is beaten 
and tossed by the tempest. 
Stand firm, O Soul! lest thou be found 
not worthy to preach the great Truths 
when the hour shall arrive and thou wilt 
arise in freedom to go forth into the 
world. If thou livest not for Truth, thou 
wouldst better die. To live to eat and to 
sleep would be a shame — just so much 
room in the world taken up, and by an 
unfruitful fig tree, which shall be cut 
down and cast into the fire. 

The Ideal ^^^^ 4. When I visited the Convent, one 
Vision of sweet Sister told me that whenever she 
the Universe was not engaged in active duties she 
escaped to the Chapel to visit the "Blessed 
Sacrament;" and so will I, when disen- 
gaged and alone, yield up the eyes of my 

56 



NFOLDING 

soul to contemplation of the Blessed 
Sacrament of the Ideal Vision of the Uni- 
verse. I lie prostrate and adoring in the 
Real Presence of this beauteous picture 
of Spiritual Immensities. I desire to be- 
come in harmony with this Reality. I 
find my rest in contemplation. 

May 10. All the energies must now go to v-rifting 
the healing of the wounded parts. I have 
not been able to study for months and 
can read but little, just lying all day, in 
half sleeping, half waking state; drifting, 
drifting, farther and farther tow^ard the 
deep current of Divine Being, with an 
ever increasing realization of the truth 
that all things are the expression of in- 
telligence, the young leaf that comes 
forth from the woody branch, as well as 
myself. 

I seem to be passing through some pro- 
cess of death, slowly dying, inch by inch, 
day by day, hour by hour, moment by 
moment; dying to the old life to awaken 
to the new. I am nerveless. An irresisti- 
ble indifference and lack of power for 
action takes possession of me. As the 
seaweed floats on the bosom of the ocean, 
so do I lie upon the bosom of the great 
deep of divine Life — drifting, drifting. 

May 11. Beside me stands a jar of apple 
blossoms; another of the purple lilac and 

57 



UNFOLDING 

The Bleeding the lovely red wings off the maple trees. 
Heart On my desk stands a large bunch of dog- 
wood twigs, pine and spirea. On the 
bookcase, wild honeysuckles, wild pan- 
sies and the bleeding heart — the bleeding 
heart. Oh, the bleeding heart I Is there 
consciousness in these exquisite blos- 
soms? 

AnInrusJi May 12. I wish I could describe the state 
of Poiver of my thought and feeling. At times I 
am aware of an immense inrush of 
power, an enormous storing up of 
energy to think, to feel, to do, to go; to 
start off on long foot journeys, to tramp 
over native and foreign countries, ming- 
ling with the people; to engage in social 
work, where I shall receive wings, the 
wings of good health, where there will 
be no longer consciousness of the body's 
machinery to put in motion, but con- 
sciousness only of will and thought to do. 
The SouVs June 6. The Soul is visited by moments 
Contentment of exquisite happiness. She knows not 
from whence they come. Outward cir- 
cumstances are not such as to warrant 
these glimpses of the Soul's serenity — the 
serenity of Beethoven' s Pastoral Sym- 
phony — nevertheless the heavens open 
above and shower upon her moments 
of sweetest bliss — the Soul's content- 
ment. 

58 



UNFOLDING 

The Soul fears not ennui, for time is 
not long enough for the lover of all 
things. She fears not the future. She 
rests in faith that the good she earns is 
coming with the process of the suns, 
and the honest Soul ought to ask no 
more. She fears not treachery. The 
heart may not again place her fully 
garnered store all in one frail granary. 
She fears not death, for death is the arms 
of Nature I 

June 7. The blooming of my grapevine The Blooming 
is accomplished. Beneath the broad, of the Grape 
green leaves this silent and divine drama 
was enacted. All that I saw or was sen- 
sible of was that a halo of pale gold rays 
came forth and a delicious fragrance 
filled the air. The gold vanished and the 
scent was gone and all was done. The 
marriage rite was solemnized and life 
was given, so silent, so potent and so 
beautiful. Would that human life might 
be like this! 

June 12. I lie out under the open sky, to Clouds 
watch the silent dignity of the clouds as 
they come up over the mountain. First 
there is a mere speck or rim of white, 
or a little peak jutting above the green 
crest, rising higher every moment, grow- 
ing larger and larger until a great cloud 
looms up ana sails away to the zenith. 

59 



UNFOLDING 

What grand leisure, what freedom in the 
motions of the clouds, forever expanding 
and moving onward! How they are con- 
tinually changing, separating, rearrang- 
ing, melting into one another, combin- 
ing into new forms, shaping great conti- 
nents and huge mountains, islets and 
fragments of vaporous stuff, like "the 
baseless fabric of a dream." They seem 
to be alive. They are the thoughts of 
the sky, and the stars are its memories I 

Doves' Voices June 16. The air is full of the music of 
the doves' languishing voices. They seem 
to be the sighs of love coming up from 
out the great heart of Nature — that great 
bosom of love too full to be repressed. 
I look to see the green grass heave in 
rhythmical breaths as I listen to those 
love-notes which move my soul to tears 
of tenderness. 

Why the JuNE 17. Life would not be worth the 
World Is living, worth the pain and struggle, were 
So Beautiful a not for joy, the joy of loving and 
being loved. This is why the world is so 
beautiful — a fitting palace in which to 
celebrate the marriage of souls, the wed- 
dings of spirit comrades. 
Eobins June 22. The air is resounding with the 
jubilate shouts of the robins. Two little 
red-breasted bird-men are shouting at 
once and the chorus beats anything I 

60 



UNFOLDING 

ever heard. The high pitch, the precis- 
ion of the notes, the sweetness of tone, 
the volubility, the lusty vigor, the ram- 
pant spirits, the positive gladness of it 
all, produces an impression upon me 
which is actually exciting. I am told that 
these concerts celebrate the occasions of 
hatching out of the young. What hymns 
of joy they seem to be! 0, thou Little 
Brother, thou dost teach this poor, low- 
spirited heart to look up and be thank- 
ful! 

June 23. Years of pain and solitary con- is the Bitter 

finement become the season of the Soul's Sweet Today? 

purgation. Is the bitter sweet today, O 

Soul? 

It is not altogether bitter. 

July 3. A little moment of divine life a Little 
came to the Soul this afternoon. She was Moment of 
content to suffer and to w^ait for the Divine Life 
fulness of time. 

July 5. The pine tree changes with the The Pine Tree 
hours of the day. 

In the morning it stands dark and mys- 
terious against the eastern sky, like the 
young poet waiting for fame. 
At mid-day it is crowned with a pale 
gold shower of light — the voice of the 
people's acclamation — and the mysteri- 
ous shadows have retreated wdthin its 
depths of trunk and branch, as the most 

61 



UNFOLDING 

sensitive thought retires into the depths 
of the heart before tlie glare of the 
world. 

At evening, from the west, the sun shines 
upon the young blossoming cones, and 
behold! the tree is hung with a thousand 
tapers of light, as the sun sets and night 
comes down from the sky. 
It is the smile of the Holy One, crowned 
and blessed, who is bidding farewell to 
the world. 
The Life of July 6. My mind seems to have a life of 
the Mind its own, distinct from the life of the 
body. I do not lose consciousness of dis- 
eased conditions, yet at times it almost 
seems to be the body of some other per- 
son, so free, independent and rejoicing 
is the life of the mind. 

Brain and July 12. As the ear is but the physical 
Spirit contrivance, by means of which the 
slower ether waves are transmitted to 
the brain, so may the brain be the mere 
physical contrivance by means of which 
matter is brought into contact with 
spirit. 

The July 18. What is the commonplace? It 
Common'place is thought and action without purpose, 
without need. Every act that is from 
necessity has its poetical aspect. Only 
the needless act is without poetry. It is 
mean from end to end. Hence all af- 

62 



I NFOLDING 

fectations are commonplace and can not 
become poetical. 

July 19. It is summer, summer, summer- Summer 
land! I sit on the little porch overhung 
with grapevines, in wild gracefulness 
untrimmed by the pruning knife. Sun- 
shine floods the world. A dewdrop sap- 
phire trembles between two leaves. Some 
tint of red calls to my eyes, it is the 
clover-heads standing like an army of 
little soldiers, each one proudly holding 
up his gay-colored helmet to the sun. 
As the breeze moves over the spider webs 
on the grass, it appears as a magician 
who conjures up silver to scatter in 
shimmering threads as he goes. In the 
distance the green dome of a large tree 
rises against the sky; nothing is more 
beautiful than the tremors of the morn- 
ing winds there. As they pass along each 
leaf, the tree is hung with tiny bells of 
light. Radiant spots of sunshine are 
reflected from the leaves in the tops of 
the plum tree, forming a miniature galaxy 
of stars arranged in clusters and festoons 
similar to the suns on the Milky Way. 
Such semblance hath all things in Nature 
from the leaf to the star! 

July 20. What I believe to be the pro- 
foundest truth in life is the opposite of 
the dogma of Total Depravity. It is that 

63 



UNFOLDING 

A Divine instead of man's thoughts being evil con- 

Music tinually and his heart desperately wicked, 

the deepest note in his constitution to be 

struck is one that will give out a divine 

music and no chord of hell. 

An Exquisite August 20. The Poet has an exquisite 

Pain of Soul pain of the Soul. She can do nothing 

but lie still and weep. Life — Nature — is 

touching her with infinite grace and 

beauty. 

Transmutation August 30. All the filth, all the bad 
smells — all — belong to the earth. She is 
able to take care of all. She receives all 
into her bosom, as the heart of a divine 
love receives back with forgiveness the 
most criminal offender, purifying, regen- 
erating. 

I try to escape from these noxious things. 
They do not belong to me. But they be- 
long to the earth. She does not try to 
escape from them. They are hers. In 
her divine life she transmutes all into the 
good of her own uses. May not I too be- 
come cosmic, transmuting evil into good, 
recreating all that may come to me, as 
the earth recreates, into the pure gold 
of a divine existence? 

The Soul in August 31. The Soul is passing through 

Transition si transition stage. She lies as the seed 

in the ground that appears to die before 

it germinates into the new life. There 

64 



UNFOLDING 

is a pause. Thought is asleep. When it 
awakens, it will be to a new and higher 
interpretation of life; the old agony 
passed away; the fluctuations of hope 
and despair sunk out of sight; the new 
life of faith and power and joy; the new 
interpretation of the universe in its 
spiritual significance. 

September 3. It is said that Moses went "Gods, 
up into the mountain and received the Though in 
divine law. I say that I, too, go up into the Germ" 
the mountain and receive the divine law. 
I am called a skeptic and an infidel. I 
say that those persons who so speak are 
themselves skeptics and infidels because 
they say that only a few persons, who 
lived thousands of years ago, were in- 
spired; but I say that inspiration is tak- 
ing place today. They draw the limit 
to the operation of divine power, while 
I draw no limit to it. They say that 
Jesus only was the Son of God, and I 
say that you are the Son of God, and I 
am the Son of God and that everyone is 
the Son of God because God is the Father 
and Creator of everyone. Inspiration is 
the perception of Truth. Inspiration is 
here. Receive it. Divinity is here. 
Use it. 

September 4. Other life than our own 
w^e call "nature," such as the cricket, 

65 



UNFOLDING 

The Poetic with its musical and solitary note, or 
Perspective trees, or mountains in their silent beauty, 
and that nature in its totality appears 
clothed in a garment of divine peace. 
We talk of love for Nature as though 
communion with her brought us nearer 
to God. The truth is that Nature ap- 
pears thus majestic because she is not 
our own life. We are at a sufficient dis- 
tance from her to see with the poetic 
perspective. We can look with dispas- 
sionate eyes at that which is outside and 
beyond ourselves. Could we view it from 
the poetic perspective we should see that 
our own existence is "nature" and that 
it, too, is clothed in a garment of divine 
beauty and peace. Only the philosopher 
and the poet can discern life truly, be- 
cause they rise to those heights whence 
man is seen in his divine aspect. 

designation September 12. The Soul is sinking 
deeper and deeper into the world of res- 
ignation. She is frequently visited by 
moments of spiritual acceptance. The 
hour of impatience, of rebellion, of bitter 
agony, is passing away. 

A Jar of September 13. I lie and take not my 

Grasses eyes off a jar of grasses that stands upon 

my table. I am entranced by their simple 

beauty. I will be still and at peace, as 

they are still and at peace. 



jUNFOLDING 

October 2. Few there be who give the 
Soul food to eat, or drink to slake her 
thirst. In solitude she is filled. When 
alone, then is she fed and given drink. 
Does this mean that the Soul receives 
more from herself than from others? 
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," 
said Christ. 

The Soul has passed through all stages 
of unfolding which the intellectual de- 
velopment of the world has experienced, 
She has had her emergence out of un- 
consciousness; her stage of ignorance and 
mere sensation when she began to look 
about her; her period of absolute cre- 
dulity, followed by that of wonder and 
doubt, and her flood of revolt and skep- 
ticism which swept all before it — all the 
accumulations of false beliefs. After that 
came the period in which was developed 
the habit of a slow and painstaking ef- 
fort to gather knowledge, at which time 
a cold and critical materialism predom- 
inated. The Soul cried aloud, but Nature 
was dead and gave no reply. She is now 
well advanced in the scientific stage. She 
is putting into its proper place each fact, 
slowly accumulated during the years. 
She is learning to generalize and begin- 
ning to grasp principles. It is now a de- 
lightful occupation to think. As each 
idea appears, she places it in its proper 

67 



Stages of 
tJw SouVs 
Unfolding 



UNFOLDING 

setting. It is like making mosaic pic- 
tures and seeing each stone drop into its 
proper place. Instead of the old pain 
and despair, comes the delight of creat- 
ing her world, as the painter sees his 
canvas begin to breathe, or the sculptor 
is enraptured when he beholds the marble 
assuming the outlines and activities of 
life. The Soul stands upon the threshold 
of the next and final stage of a grand 
philosophical faith and vital religion. 

The Poet October 3. The poet is not occupied with 
his own individual interests, as is the 
practical man. The poet becomes all 
persons and all things. Through sym- 
pathy he loses himself in other lives. 
He lies out in the sunshine seemingly 
idle. In reality he is working with the 
laborer, down in the ditch digging to lay 
the water pipes; or he is playing with 
the school children at recess, until the 
school bell rings to call them back to 
tasks, and the voices at play are hushed. 
He sees the distant home of one he loves. 
He lives the newly wedded life. He 
brings to all the elements of love and sym- 
pathy. He is the personal friend of the 
near pine tree. He responds to its in- 
vitation to come and dwell with it. 

October 4. Poetry involves abstract 
ideas. I hear a child's merry laugh. It 

68 



Poetry 
Involves 
Abstract 
Ideas 



UNFOLDING 

becomes poetry for me only as the sound 
suggests the idea of a child's merry laugh 
as an element in life; that is to say, the 
concrete idea of the individual laugh 
must be lifted into the abstract idea of 
any child's laugh. The particular must 
be seen in the light of its universal, and 
restored again to its particularity, refined 
and purified, bringing back higher and 
enlarged relations. "Fine distinctions are 
prosaic," says Novalis. Poetry needs 
broader touches. Having thrown the 
light of the universal upon the particular, 
in other words, having carried up the 
concrete idea into the region of the ab- 
stract, the poet descends again. He as- 
cended only to fasten the object of 
thought to its proper background, as a 
picture is hung in the true light that it 
may be seen to the best advantage. He 
comes down again to behold the thought 
in its new and proper light. 

October 5. I am reading "Songs Before Sivinhume 

Sunrise." What a day it is for me! The 

book has lain a year on my shelf, not 

even the leaves cut. I did not dream that 

this poet would so awaken my soul. I 

am one with him in his love of freedom, 

— intellectual freedom from binding 

cords of creed and dogma — freedom and 

love for all. I am one with him in his 



69 



UNFOLDING 

Swinhurne fearless truth-speaking; in his condemna- 
tion of the power of kings and nobles 
over the people; of the unjust claims of 
mere caste; of priestcraft and of time- 
and-place-serving. 

Swinburne is for me a poet because he 
voices what is in my own heart, giving 
wings of light to my dumb thought that 
lies in darkness, unable to rise, and with 
the swiftness of the morning fly out 
through the heavens. 

He sings of the mind's darkness and of 
the slavery of man in the land of kings. 
His words ring with the sadness of a 
terrible truth. 

"Here with a hope hardly to wear, 

Naked nations and bare 

Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn." 

His thought is permeated with the thought 
of the Bible — I mean its stories and 
poetical allegories. 

Scattered throughout his poems occur 
ideas that strike the thought-chord of the 
dawn — 

"By the first white light that stirs and 

strives and hovers 
As the bird above the brood her bosom 

covers — " 

Ever sustaining the key-note of Songs Be- 
fore Sunrise sounding musically through 
the mind. He uses simple words and 

70 



UNFOLDING 

every sentence contains a thought-jewel : Swinburne 

"The rhythmic anguish of growth and 
the motion of mutable things." 

"Was it love brake forth flower-fash- 
ion, a bird with gold on his wings?" 

The philosophy of his thoughts belongs 
to modern Post-Kantian Idealism. 

"Space is thoughts, and the wonders 

thereof, and the secrets of space; 
Is thought not more than the thunders 

and lightnings? Shall thought give 

place?" 
"Time, father of life, and more great 

than the life it begat and began. 
Earth's keeper and heaven's and their 

fate, lives, thinks and hath substance 

in man." 
"By the spirit are things overcome; 

they are stark and the spirit hath 

breath." 

The two distinctively modern poets, 
Swinburne and Walt Whitman, whether 
consciously or unconsciously, sing in the 
thought of Ideal Philosophy. Both recog- 
nize the organic unity of thought with 
its object. Walt Whitman's theme is love. 
Swinburne's is freedom. 

October 6. Surely this is the beginning, 
at least, of resignation. The Soul is 
visited by moments of a full conscious- 

71 



UNFOLDING 

The Joy ness of the delicious pain of sorrow, of 
of Trust purgation by the purifying waters of sor- 
row; the uplifted, the uprisen joy of 
arms emptied by grief of that which was 
individual and partial, to be filled by that 
which is eternal; the joy of trust, of 
knowing that it is well, that it is the ful- 
fillment of the law. 

"0 Peter, October 21. The Soul knows not whence 
Go Ring it comes that she is so happy today. She 
Dem Bells" could shout in the words of the old negro 
hymn : 

"0 Peter, go ring dem bells. 
I've heard from heaven today!" 

The Diver October 22. There is an ever-increasing 
of the Soul desire, nay, a hunger and thirst of the 
Soul, to teach, to comfort the poor and 
ignorant, to give them light on their dark 
way; to show them that life — fulness of 
life — lies within and not without in the 
hands of some arbitrary Dens ex machind 
who may bless or curse them as he 
pleases. That joy and power and divinity 
lie within their own souls and there only 
may God be found; and if God, then all 
the power, all the riches, all the sweet- 
ness in the world. The diver of the Soul 
shall plunge into the deepest waters of 
the spirit to seek for the pearl of great 
price. He will then cease not until he 
share his treasure with his fellows. 

72 



UNFOLDING 

October 23. The eastern sky this even- Clouds 
ing is a living picture of the moods of and Moods 
the mind. Great white clouds are com- 
ing up from the horizon with long pro- 
jections stretching to the zenith — symbols 
of noble aspiration — followed by masses 
of dark, storm clouds — the frowns and 
despondency of the Soul. 

October 29. Is it not more unreasonable Eternal 
to say that man was produced from non- Thought 
living matter, than to say that force, 
energy, is the manifestation of Eternal 
Thought, infinite Spirit? It may be urged 
that non-living matter — the inorganic — 
is a fact of experience which no one can 
doubt; whereas Eternal Thought is merely 
assumed to exist. But we see order and 
intelligence operating all the processes of 
the universe; hence reflection points as 
definitely and positively to the existence 
of Eternal Thought, as do our senses con- 
strain us to believe in the existence of 
the inorganic. To speak more accurately, 
there is no non-living matter, for the in- 
organic itself is alive, itself manifests the 
presence of order and intelligence, and 
the clearness of the dividing line grows 
less and less, as the mind progresses on 
its onward march of knowledge. 

October 30. Poetry hath wings to fly 
whithersoever she pleases. Poetry is 

73 



UNFOLDING 

The Sciences free. The particular sciences are the 

the Slaves slaves of thought. They fetch and carry 

of Thought for the mind. Poetry is thought at its 

mastery — the Queen, the Empress — she 

sits upon the throne of the intellect and 

the heart. 

Tennyson's October 31. O Beautiful Soul, sent to 
Death earth to sing of heavenly harmonies! 

O beautiful passing away — Light and 

Nature to the end! 

O Sweetness, O Peace, O Joy, passing into 

Eternity! 

O tender consideration toward all I 

O his thanks to his nurses! 

O beautiful form in death! 

O marks of time and contention softly 

passing away! 

O the noble face, still and fresh and 

calm! 

O the moon, a desolate world, shedding 

light upon all! 

O like the heart of the Renunciant whence 

flows purest blessedness! 

O the darkness and the silence and no 

light save the moonlight! 

O the gentle passing away! 

O the season of the katydid's last song! 

O the season of the death-song of the 

cricket! 

O the season of the goodbye-song of the 

lonely grasshopper! 

74 



UNFOLDING 

O the dying colors of Autumn on field 

and mountain! 

to know that Tennyson is dead! 

the resurrection song of the redbird! 

O the resurrection song of the human 

Soul! 

November 11. These pale, golden days, Indian 

the last of autumn, the Indian Summer of Summer 

the year! See the soft, white clouds lying 

still in the blue above, like ships at 

anchor, or moving onward, slowly and 

majestic, like ships far out at sea. 

O that the restless heart might be still 

and at peace as Nature is at peace — a 

ship at anchor, a cloud poised and at 

rest on the bosom of heaven! 

November 26. The sun poured down his The Lone 
gold upon the w^orld, and the little boy Farmhouse 
came in the carriage with the old horse, 
to drive her out to the fields and the 
valleys, and the lone farmhouse. 
The good mother had spread a full 
Thanksgiving table in the decent kitchen 
with floor scrubbed white and open 
hearth where crackled the fire-logs. The 
low, small-paned windows gay with pot- 
ted plants and the mountains standing 
outside — like Eternity looking down 
upon the little passing hour. 
The lone farmhouse and the old cherry 
tree and afterward the friends' "good- 

75 



UNFOLDING 
bye." The drive home with the simple 
child seated beside, muffled in old coat, 
and hat only half concealing the little 
white face with its sweet and thoughtful 
look upon it. 

the memory of love, and all the hun- 
ger of the heart, and the sky, and the 
whiteness, and the space, and the two 
uplifted visions of the mountains, far 
away, melting into blue ether, like the 
Spirit of Poetry hovering on the one 
side, and the Spirit of Peace, on the 
other side, of the lone farmhouse plain 
and quiet upon its hill! 

The Why November 27. The Poet yields up her- 
self to the great contemplation — the 
holding in her thought the vast concep- 
tion of the universe. She sees worlds 
upon worlds wheeling onward upon their 
Eternal courses through infinite space. 
With the Psalmist she exclaims: "When 

1 consider thy heavens . . . what 
is man that thou beholdest him, or the 
son of man that thou shouldst consider 
him?" She beholds the constitution and 
nature of suns and worlds as vague con- 
ceptions, some peopled with many kinds 
of beings, animals, plants. She beholds 
the human race, she sees her own destiny 
in the light of eternity. She hears the 
unfathomable yearning of the W/ir/. 

76 



UNFOLDING 

November 28. Modern progress is not in- Modern 
compatible with sentiment nor sentiment Progress and 
with progress; on the contrary, the Sentiment 
noblest sentiment is now more possible 
than ever before, because there are wider 
fields of activity on altruistic lines. 
Sentiment does not consist of crude 
schoolgirl musings. Real sentiment is 
based on living facts; its source lies in 
a wholesome, natural impulse of the 
human heart. It is fine feeling expressed 
in ideas and ready to pass over into moral 
activitv — if there be need. It is the 
opposite of sentimentality, which never 
is ready to pass over into moral activity. 
Real sentiment is ever accompanied by a 
willingness to make a sacrifice in behalf 
of its object. With sentimentality, on 
the contrary, there is present a shrinking 
from obligation; it merely poses as senti- 
ment, making much of unrealities. 
With modern progress new and wider 
fields for thought and feeling are opening 
for humanity. True poetic sentiment — 
all real sentiment has poetry in it — must 
be plastic and open to further develop- 
ment. As knowledge increases, modern 
progress calls for a new poetry of life — 
a new, a purer, a larger sentiment; a 
poetry which will include not man only, 
as the sole monarch of the world, but 
woman also as his co-equal in all future 

77 



UNFOLDING 

Modern development; and not only the man and I 
Progress and the woman blessed by the smiles of for- 
Sentiment tune, but the poor and ignorant must be 
received now on equal terms. 
"By God! I will accept nothing which i 
all can not have their counterpart of oni 
the same terms," says Walt Whitman. 
The doctrine of evolution in science, and 
the principle of development in philoso- 
phy, which embrace the grandest ideas 
of modern thought, teach us to include 
within the sphere of our meditative love 
even our dumb servants, the animals; 
nay, plant life itself, with its marvelous 
beauty; aye, and the very stocks and 
stones of earth call for love and recog- 
nition; that man may no longer suppose 
he inhabits a world of which he is sole 
master, wherein to disport himself in 
good humor or cruelty, as the passing 
mood may so please him to do; but that 
he shall become a reverent dweller in the 
divine Temple of Life, wherein all is 
sacred and shall be so regarded. 
As science and philosophy lead the van 
of progress, sentiment and poetry shall 
progressively remould their forms, and 
take their objects of contemplation and 
of rhapsody from out the great store- 
houses of assured and rational truth. 
Swinburne and Whitman, one the singer 
of human freedom, the other, the singer 

78 



UNFOLDING 

of human comrade-love, would have been 
impossible in the time of Homer, who, 
according to the childish mode of con- 
ception in his day and generation, re- 
garded the mind as only a fainter copy, 
a reflection of the body, and supposed 
that a man's real self was destroyed with 
the body, Homer thus makes the souls of 
his heroes descend into the underworld 
while they themselves are a prey for dogs 
and birds. 

The spirit of Romance, I concei^'2, need 
not expire or lose its vitality under the 
stress of modern progress, if only it be 
plastic, if only it be tempered to the on- 
ward march. The old spirit of Romance 
which had its expression at any cost, is 
now called on to recast its forms, to 
recognize the necessity of the moral dis- 
cipline of bringing the individual experi- 
ence into its right relation as an element 
in the organic unity of society and the 
world of thought. And so shall the spirit 
of Sentiment become purified and ex- 
alted. 

December 13. The sunrise is the festival Sunrise 
of the Sky prepared by Nature for the 
god's triumphal entrance on the day. 
There is an overhanging arch from east 
to west. It is of pale blue. In the east 
there gathers a host of glittering armorial 

79 



UNFOLDING 

Sunrise knights. A few of the scattered cohorts 
of the day are swiftly coming on the 
wings of the winds. Others approach 
with slow and measured pace. A red- 
bird sings the morning hymn. The sol- 
emn mountain, "clothed in purple and 
fine linen," stands with uncovered head 
reverentially. The Poet, too, stands and 
adores, for now the god appears, "as a 
giant to run his course," his head 
crowned with the glorj' of the world. 



80 



In Harmony 

My uprisen thought of 

good health and harmony hovers over 

the physical part, leading the 

stricken body as the Shekinah 

irradiated the Ark of the 

Covenant before the 

Israelites. 




IN HARMONY 

January 2, 1893. There is, of late, a The World 
strong tendency toward rest from all out- of the 
ward activity and a call to turn inward; Still Things 
a need to cease from study and to listen 
quietly to the voice within the Soul; need 
for a great deal of sleep, for a great many 
hours in which to lie still, realizing con- 
tact with silent Nature. O the time of 
weakness, of convalescence! 
the world of privation and to be 
thrown in upon one's self; of looking to 
the inward power alone to sustain and 
cheer! The being alone in the World of 
the Still Things — of distant sounds, of 
birds' notes, of winds soughing in pine 
trees, of mute sunshine, and silent shad- 
ows, the Soul the only human alive. 
The radiant figure of Hope, so long the 
companion of the Soul upon the dark 
road over which she has come, has de- 
parted. The Soul is alone. It is the 
season of waiting, of trusting, of faith. 

83 



IN HARMONY 

The Common JANUARY 3. There is need, n(>w and then, 
Nature for a time of rest in which to drink 
deeply of the common Nature. All exist- 
ence is simply the being of things. Take 
away any particular thing by itself, 
examine it, analyze it, reduce it to its 
elements, reduce them again until you 
can go no farther. You will find there is 
only a simple being and a combination 
for a certain purpose of uses; you will 
see that the only persistent, the only en- 
during is the common Nature. When I 
rest I drink deeply of the common Nature. 
I fall into the poetic mood. I listen to 
distant sounds. I am touched by their 
spiritual significance. I see how all 
things vibrate with the common Nature. 
The tiny cowbell's tone makes a note in 
the great Symphony, as the caw of the 
distant crow and the far-off shouts of the 
boys. 

The Pity of It January 4. It seems a pity, oh, the pity 
of it! that no sooner do people arrive at 
middle age — the time when they have 
only just learned how to live, when they 
have acquired some knowledge, some 
wisdom, when heart and mind are ripe, 
— than they lie down and die; many of 
them instead of entering as they might 
upon the richest period of life; the sea- 
son when the soil of mind and heart is 

84 



IN HARMONY 

ready to produce crops of usefulness and 
happiness impossible before. Kant wrote 
his three great critiques after fifty years 
of age. See Mr. Gladstone, premier of 
England at eighty-four, and Tennyson 
writing poems up to the time of his 
death at over eighty. It would appear 
that these men were naturally so filled 
with the divine life, although they, too, 
held the divine spark instinctively, that 
the inherited and associated instinct to 
begin to fail at middle age, was post- 
poned many years beyond the ordinary 
term. 

January 5. Is it not possible for self- Acquired 
conscious power to replace the in- Youthfulness 
stinctive? Heart and lungs expand, di- 
gestion and assimilation take place moved 
on by an automatic activity of the nervous 
centers. Now let these vital functions 
become the servants of the self-conscious 
cerebral cortex. 

From birth to "midway upon the journey 
of our life" the fulness of vigor is in- 
stinctive. Why may not power be ac- 
quired to live youthfully after fifty years, 
by self-conscious living — self-conscious 
thought used for the purpose of acquir- 
ing continued youthfulness of frame, 
continued good health and activity far 
beyond the period now set and generally 

85 



IN HARMONY 
recognized as the inevitable term of 
active life. 

It is already stated as a fact in science 
that living organisms are formed slowly 
by conscious effort. Each creature and 
thing forms itself according to its need 
and environment by virtue of its own 
inherent power, which is, in fact, a part 
of the power and purposes of the eternal 
universe. 

In his essay on Fate, Emerson has this 
to say: "The Soul contains the event 
that shall befall it; for the event is only 
the actualization of its thoughts, and 
what we pray to ourselves is always 
granted. The event is the print of your 
form. . . History is the action and re- 
action of these two — nature and thought. 
. . . Every solid in the universe is ready 
to become fluid on the approach of mind, 
and the power to flux it is the measure 
of the mind." 

The Day of January 6. In youth the Soul was dumb. 

Knowledge She was without speech and without 
knowledge. She was oppressed and 
crushed into silence by the helplessness 
of ignorance. True, an irresistible intui- 
tion led her to oppose herself inwardly 
to the teachings of her elders; yet she 
knew nothing. She had no arguments 
with which to assert and hold a new posi- 

86 



IN HARMONY 

tion. She knew nothing, yet she believed The Bay of 
that human slavery was wrong; that re- Knowledge 
spect for class distinctions in society and 
the privileged few was a crime against 
humanity and that theological dogmas 
were mere superstitions. 
The young Soul was as one imprisoned 
in a dungeon where she dreamed of free- 
dom — freedom from the old forms of 
thought and custom. The principles 
taught her under those old forms were 
those of truthfulness, justice and clean- 
ness. For this she shall always rejoice 
and feel thankful. 

Now is arriving the day of knowledge, of 
some speech and freedom when the Soul 
may help spread the Gospel of Truth. 
The early, helpless, dumb life, contrasted 
with ripened maturity, is as the time 
when the human race was as yet 
struggling in its dumb, animal existence, 
compared with the present period of a 
great art and literature. A little space 
yet of patience and may not the Soul step 
forth, full-fledged and gloriously en- 
dowed with a new life, a higher and a 
grander youth — the self-conscious youth? 

January 7. When vice-like pain clinches 
the body and there is no interval of rest, 
— when eyes are painful and refuse to 
serve; when all heart seems to have died 

87 



IN HARMONY 

The out of everything — then life is simply 
Bed-Bird's an endurance; as it is with the wretched 
Song criminal in his cell, when the hopeless- 
ness of captivity overcomes him. Yet the 
air is mild that comes in through the 
open window and the heart hears the 
red-bird's song outside. 

A Vision of January 8. The thought of a grand Res- 
tJie Sun ignation enters the Soul. There are 
moments when she kisses the rod that 
smites. In her darkest hour, when she 
was prostrate in the dungeon, alone and 
in pain, rejected and despised, like 
Benvenuto Cellini in his dungeon she 
prayed for a vision of the sun. Like him, 
the Soul, too, was shown that vision, and 
shall faith fail now? — the vision of the 
sunrise of the day of self-conscious, 
moral control over passion, the day of 
virtue, the day of knowing, the day of 
a grand faith, the day of a divine joy! 

My Method JANUARY 9. The method I use in study- 
of Study ing any subject or branch of knowledge 
— which was naturally evolved and not 
consciously adopted — is as follows: — 
First there is the interest to supply the 
motor power. I begin to gather facts 
as I may have opportunity. As one puts 
down stakes when laying off a new piece 
of ground, so do I place in my mind my 
first gathered facts relating to the sub- 

88 



IN HARMONY 

ject in hand. They may be scattered, My Method 
irregular and even seemingly opposed to of Study 
each other, yet they serve as a beginning, 
and I allow none to slip past me. I hold 
the facts tentatively, not attempting any 
judgment as yet. I continue reading on 
the subject, and do not become impatient 
if, at first, I fail fully to comprehend all 
that I read, being aware that a good deal 
of the subject will escape me because of 
my unfamiliarity with it. I am not yet 
prepared to grasp the full meaning of all, 
so take hold of only so much as I can 
hold to. Then I begin filling in between 
the stakes first laid down, frequently re- 
arranging, as I find myself able to place 
any facts in better order and properer 
relations to each other. This con- 
tinues until something like a general 
concept is formed. I am then able to 
move forward more rapidly and under- 
standingly; learning all the time to get 
and keep my bearings more and more 
clearly. Finally, when I have attained a 
tolerably good grasp and comprehensive 
view of the subject, I feel prepared to 
scrutinize every statement made, allow- 
ing nothing to pass by without a clear 
understanding of it, often going back 
over the ground, examining and compar- 
ing in the light of enlarged acquisitions. 
I often transpose and reconstruct a 

89 



IN HARMONY 

sentence for the purpose of trying to find 
the meaning of it more perfectly. 
I hold tentatively the opinion and judg- 
ments of any one author, passing on to 
another who may offer an opposing opin- 
ion, or present a different point of view. 
After having thus examined many difiter- 
ent views on the same subject I then pro- 
ceed to conciliate one with the other, 
perhaps casting out certain opinions alto- 
gether and when such introduction may 
be allowable introducing in their stead 
views of my own to make out a satis- 
factory solution of any problem, or to 
complete a systematic view of the sub- 
ject; often, as in philosophy, when it is 
difficult to hold the attention closely, I 
shut my eyes and repeat sentence after 
sentence, until I receive the meaning 
clearly in my mind. 
To the January 12. O Plum Tree! Thou didst 
Plum Tree j^ear the fairest fruit and sweet to the 
taste in the summer season. Thou dost 
now stand, patient and trustful, through 
the darkness and the cold of the winter 
season. 

O teach me thy patience and thy trust! 
O the patience and the silent trust of all 
vegetation! 

January 13. All sounds which are dis- 
tant enough to become poetical are dear 

90 



IN HARMONY 

to tbe poet. He loves the sound of the 
woodman's axe; the humming bee on the 
wing; the shouts of school children; the 
song of the wagoner as he passes by, 
drawn by his patient beasts; the chat- 
tering of the sparrows; the reedy, flute- 
tones of little cedar birds; the buzz of 
passing insect; even the prosaic crow of 
the cock- fowl; the lowered speech-tunes 
of the farmer to his horses as they turn 
the corner on the street, "Woa-haw;" the 
light-hearted whistle of the young man as 
he passes by. 

February 13. I am very weary and must 
rest again from my studies. I will lie 
down and watch the solemn procession 
of the clouds, to receive refreshment 
from contemplation of Nature, to be filled 
again with that divine wine and essence 
of life which I have used up, until now 
I am empty and need to go to the wells 
to draw and drink my fill. 

February 19. One happy moment came 
to the Soul this morning. The birds were 
singing as though it were spring. A red- 
bird sat in the boughs of a near locust 
tree, whistling some sweet, sad, happy 
note. The Soul rejoiced in his tune and 
in the mild, tissuey sunlight, and the 
warm air, and the rushing voice of the 
snow-swollen stream. 



Sounds 
to the Poet 



The Solemn 
Procession of 
the Clouds 



One Happy 

Moment 



91 



IN HARMONY 

As the Thread March 3. I see it stated by the high caste 
Through a Brahmin, Swami Vivekananda, that, "The 
String Lord has declared to the Hindu, in his 
of Pearls incarnation of Krishna, 'I am in every 
religion as the thread through a string of 
pearls.' " I was surprised because of the 
similarity of my own thought already ex- 
pressed in this journal where I said, "In 
the impelling struggle for truth and right 
in the world divine love is concealed like 
a thread upon which are strung, like 
beads, the thoughts of men. Few are 
crystal-pure enough to irradiate the light 
of the divine thread within. If they be, 
then that is truth, but most are dull and 
black and they be the false beliefs of 
men." 

The Mystic March 5. Spring — that dreamy, sug- 

Power gestive season has come. I hear her low, 

of Spring murmuring voice, of a "thousand blended 

notes," coming out of the depths of earth 

and sky. I feel her mystic power. 

Oiily One of March 9. The question is now ferment- 
the Gleaners ing and struggling for a final answer — 
What shall be the life work of the Soul, 
in the great human hive? She has never 
had any work; work that earns money, 
or is regular and compulsory. Aspiration 
has assumed many forms, poetry and 
music are the chief. It is clear now that 
she possesses not one talent. She is only 

92 



IN HARMONY 

a dreamer. On that foundation or with- 
out any foundation at all, except that 
which was given by Nature herself, she 
shall perforce live and act. "The leopard 
can not change his spots, nor the Ethi- 
opian his skin." Knowledge, culture — 
these are the outlines to follow, and to 
jot down, as she may be able to catch 
some fleeting forms and colors in her 
dreams, so that some good word — Oh, 
may the word be good! — may be left for 
others when the Soul has gone hence, 
to be no more seen; also, to do all the 
good she can along the pathway as she 
goes, even to the least act of justice and 
mercy. She is not appointed by Nature 
to plough, sow or reap in the great har- 
vest fields of the world, where the strong 
laborers are at work, but is appointed, in 
the divine Order, as only one of the 
gleaners who may gather the grain that 
has been dropped and fallen by the way- 
side. 

March 21. A cloudy morning — so is the imprisonment 
inner world of the Soul. She has been 
imprisoned for years. Some are im- 
prisoned for life. 

March 24. The clouds are abroad — a Philosophy 
frowning world to face. Yesterday I 
finished the first volume of Caird's Crit- 
ical Philosophy of Kant. I inscribed 



IN HARMONY 

upon the last leaf of the book these 
words: "Philosophy is the Revelation of 
God in the intellect." 

The Cry April 11. The fires of purgatory are 
of Dives purging body and soul — burning the 
dross to leave the pure gold. 
Yesterday snow fell all day. In anguish 
the Soul cried out, like another Dives in 
hell, that the cold snowflakes might fall 
upon her inward fires. 

Philosophy Is April 12. The Soul yearns for that which 
Homesickness abides. She is heartsick of the infideli- 
ties of life. This longing lies at the root 
of her love for philosophy. It is the one 
need of the Soul — to find the permanent. 
Novalis says that philosophy is home- 
sickness. 

In a May 7. Last night during the storm the 
Thunderstorm Soul was alone in the cottage. She shrank 
in terror from the lightning and thunder. 
She recollected an account she had read 
of the awful tidal wave that destroyed 
Lost Island, on the coast of Mississippi, 
and all its inhabitants, save one negress 
and a little child. 

She remembered, too, what Heine said, 
how philosophy had made him feel like 
a god, and afterwards how he felt him- 
self shrivel to the insignificant dimen- 
sions of a helpless human being where 
he lay upon his "mattress grave." 

94 



IN HARMONY 

The Soul, too, believes that thought is 
god-force. She, too, feels that there lives 
within her an invincible power; yet, as 
she lay in her bed, unable to walk, or 
even to sit up, cowering in terror from 
the cannonading of the skies, her hands 
covering her eyes, her fingers closing the 
avenues to the sensitive organs of hear- 
ing that the delicacy of these conductors 
to the heart be not too heavily jarred, she 
almost laughed aloud as she said to her- 
self: "Another god, as poor Heine thought 
himself, and another shrinkage to pitiful 
human estate. A god indeed! Skulking 
in terror from the sound of his own 
thunder!" 

May 12. The Divine Doors are open — The 
such beneficent, joyous Nature! The J^ivme Boors 
Soul's Doors are open. She longs to em- 
brace her Friend with boundless love and 
confidence. Is Nature at times so rav- 
ishingly beautiful, so divinely tender, 
because she would put aside all the 
wretchedness, all the wrong-doing of her 
children and take them to her bosom 
without conditions? Is such a day as 
today one of those rapturous moments 
when the universe throbs with infinite 
love toward every creature? 
In such moments. Nature would clasp her 
erring children to her bosom, forgiving 

95 



IN HARMONY 

all their crimes against her. Such a day 
is her coronation day, to be celebrated I 
by opening every prison, by breaking! 
every chain, by giving to all her uni- 
versal love and mercy. 
Are we in the presence of God and do not 
know it? 

Under May 13. The cup of poetry is offered 
the Sicy me for drink. I thankfully partake of 
this fine wine of life. 
The dove's tender voice will not allow 
me to study philosophy. The Poet swims 
in the seas of music, beauty and poetry.* 
The sun shines gently upon her, send- 
ing his rays through fluttering, dancing 
leaves — spring leaves, fresh and young. 
The sky is of a pale, tender blue. The 
birds are hopping about and with their 
songs the air is in continuous musical 
vibration. In the midst of this sparkling 
gaiety the dark pine trees stand like 
solemn thoughts. 

And there is the little rick of new-mown 
hay beneath the pines, and the shadows 
playing on it. 

All Nature is companionable — the rays of 
the sun together, the little leaves together, 
the birds, the playing shadows, and the 
dove breathing out her love-note to her 
mate. 
But the Soul is alone. 

96 



IN HARMONY 

And now the little clouds appear, where 
before there was nothing, only the blue 
sky. They come into life like spirits 
emerging from the Infinite. 
From out the Unknown will someone 
come to the Soul? 

May 14. The Soul now passes into the 
self-conscious life — the world of self- 
knowledge, of disciplined will, of vic- 
tory. Into the youth of the self-conscious 
life, out from the world of instinct, pas- 
sion and ignorance — ^the world of decay, 
defeat and death. 

The Soul shall now stand alone, self- 
poised. She will trust and wait. 
She stands in the presence of God and 
beholds the revelation of Life. She uses 
divine powers and knows she uses them. 
She will remain silent and abide her 
time, knowing that all shall be fulfilled 
in due order. 

The days of her apprenticeship are over. 
She enters upon the mastery of life. 

May 20. At times the Soul, for whom all 
things were made; for whom exist new 
and unknow^n worlds only that she may 
conquer them, is god-like, possessing all 
things. 

Again, and the Soul appears but as a "for- 
tuitous aggregation of sensations" sus- 
pended in infinite space by unseen and 

97 



Entering 
Upon the 
Mastery 
of Life 



IN HARMONY 
unknown forces. The threads may break 
at any moment, precipitating the Soul 
into the Abysm of Nothingness. She is 
the mere creature and toy of the uni- 
verse, in which, in fact, she holds no per- 
manent place. She is but an apparition, 
a bubble of froth, seen for one moment 
on the bosom of the Deep, the next, gone 
forever; a speck of vapor on the Sky of 
Vastness to dissipate as soon as seen. 
Does this intense and never-silent yearn- 
ing for permanence — the voice of Philos- 
ophy in the Soul — bear within it no seed 
of promise of the knowledge of what 
things really are? Philosophy gives me 
an affirmative answer. The Soul is cre- 
ative. The Soul is divine. The Ideas of 
Reason reach, like fair marble columns, 
up from man to God! 

Co-operation May 21. Co-operation is the law of life. 
"All things work together for good to 
them who love God." These are they 
who love the law of the universe; who 
fall into line with Nature; who become 
obedient to the great Mother's teachings. 
Thus sang the Rishis of the Veda: 
"Thou art our Father. Thou art our 
Mother. Thou art our loved Friend. 
"Thou art He who bearest the burdens of 
the universe. Help us to bear the bur- 
den of this little life!" 

98 



IN HARMONY 

It is co-operation among the molecules 
that magnetizes the iron — each molecule 
moving onward in the same direction. 
The Soul shall become adaptable. She 
will co-operate with the universe in 
which she finds herself. 
Powell, in that noble book, "Our Hered- 
ity from God," declares that the human- 
ity of the future — the ideal man and 
woman — will be they who have learned 
to adapt themselves to any environment, 
by overcoming its antagonisms; they 
who in wisdom shall find that all things 
subserve the good and wise. 
The Soul will then search out the will of 
her great Mother, who has her now as 
clay, and is moulding and shaping her. 
All things else vanish before the neces- 
sity of this supreme work of developing 
the powers of the Soul. 
The Soul shall be like unto an instru- 
ment, well strung and attuned for the 
great symphony of Immortality. O to 
give out a pure tone when Thy hand 
shall sweep the strings! 

May 22. Life is a continuous Revelation. Heaven 
John in Patmos held no monopoly. The Here and Now 
Soul, as did he, bathes and swims in the 
Eternal Thought. She shall have indi- 
viduality in proportion as she uses and 
develops the power of infinite Nature 

99 



IN HARMONS 

which flows through her. There is no 
need to wait for another life to enter 
into heaven; she will enter into heaven 
here and now, by realizing the divine in 
herself. Jesus saw this truth when he 
said : "The Kingdom of Heaven is within 
you." 

Despair the May 27. The hardest to bear is not the 
Tempter in hour of bitterest agony, when every pulse 
the Desert beats with fury; when the entire con- 
sciousness is awake with extraordinary 
sensitiveness; when every fibre is strained 
to the utmost; when all the forces of life 
are in a raging tempest around you, and 
soul and body seem on the eve of break- 
ing, as bones and sinews break on the 
wheel of torture: but it is when, long 
after the storm is over, and the fair image 
of Hope fades before your straining eyes, 
and the first enthusiasm of friends' and 
neighbors' sweet charity for you has 
faded away also, and you lie alone with 
only the monotonous, dull, voiceless pain 
to bear. Then it is that Despair comes to 
tempt you in the desert. 

Ladye June 9. It is the day of the inner con- 
Spiritual Ai^t in the moral life — a silent battle, but 
a struggle to the death. 
Thy choice is made, O Soul! Thou shall 
follow the leadings of thy deepest nature. 
Thy chosen path lies through a lonely 

100 



IN HARMONY 

land — the development of the highest 
irrespective of self-interest or sensuous 
pleasure. The people of thy class find 
thee not companionable. They "pass thee 
by on the other side." The wounds they 
give they bind not up again with oil and 
the balm of Gilead. It may not be other- 
wise. Thou shall not ask that others give 
to thee. Thou shalt give to others. In 
the old Anglo-Saxon tongue "Ladye" 
means Loaf-giver — one who of her abun- 
dance gives away to those who lack. See 
to it that thou be Ladye Spiritual, and of 
thy store give freely to the poor. 

June 10. A moment in the Eternal Now. 
Life as we know it is but a moment in 
the "Eternal Now." The hour of the 
Soul's suffering is but a lesser moment in 
that Moment. Her season of pain and 
restraint is long and tedious only in the 
seeming. 

June 11. Truth is not cheap. There is 
need that the Soul learn the facts of life 
in due order. With the untutored eye all 
is seen at a glance. With the scholar it 
is not so. With him there is perforce 
innumerable watchings. Steady, long 
and frequent must be the penetrating 
glance of the scholar — the watching, 
the seeing, the waiting, the thinking, the 
loving of a lifetime. Shall not the Soul 



A Moment 
in the 
Eternal Now 



Truth Is 
Not Cheap 



101 



IN HARMONY 

desire to attain scholarship in the life 
spiritual? 
Metaphysic June 12. Metaphysic is the physiology of 
intellect, the chemistry of mind. 

Woman June 13. I was talking on the subject 
Sufrage of woman suffrage to a man who is op- 
posed to it. The point he made was that 
to give woman the ballot would be to in- 
troduce into politics an "irresponsible 
element." 

An irresponsible element! I was shocked 
to hear pronounced such an estimate of 
woman by man. If this is a fair repre- 
sentative view held by the male sex, no 
wonder that woman is politically classed 
with infants, idiots and madmen! In the 
light of such a verdict how do the Sap- 
phos, the Hypatias, the Joan of Arcs, the 
Queen Elizabeths, the George Eliots ap- 
pear? Or indeed that countless host 
of intelligent, educated, conscientious 
women who hold the destinies of the 
race in their keeping? Is such a light a 
true light? Is such a verdict a just ver- 
dict from the man-world to his sister 
woman-world? 

Viewing woman merely in respect of her 
relations to man and as nothing outside 
of those relations, is such a verdict just? 
Woman as man's mother, wife, sister, 
friend — shall she be regarded as an irre- 

102 



IN HARMONY 

sponsible being? To hold her as respon- 
sible in these relations, and as irrespon- 
sible (that is, without the sense of moral 
responsibility) in other relations, would 
be irrational. Think of any irrespon- 
sible mother, an irresponsible wife! Does 
a man never consult his mother or his 
wife on matters of serious import? Does 
he, then, entrust the education and form- 
ing of the moral character of his sons to 
an irresponsible being? Does a man hold 
his wife irresponsible in the matter of 
the sex relation? Have God and Nature 
placed the stamp of irresponsibility upon 
woman by making her the mother of the 
race? What is the testimony of history? 
Of science? Has she not been the leader 
of armies, the political ruler, the poet, 
the saint, the priestess? And now biology 
comes forward to crown her with prior- 
ity in the grand march of evolution. 

June 23. The question to be settled is The Brute Law 
to reconcile the brute law of "Might is Versus the 
right," with the higher law of renuncia- Higher Law 
tion; to ascertain how far the first may 
be justified as a working basis for con- 
duct, and at what point we ought to de- 
part from it and pass over to the higher 
law. 

The brute law rules in the vegetable and 
animal worlds, as also in almost the 

103 



IN HARMONY 

whole of the human world. Is it a stage 
in development, and a necessary stage, 
and as such to be tolerated? Or should 
the higher law be taught at once to all 
under all circumstances? 
Is the higher law workable among the 
poor and ignorant, the money-makers, 
and wealth-producers? If not, ought the 
higher law to be taught until these vari- 
ous classes shall become eliminated from 
society? Might not the wealth needed 
for civilization be produced by co- 
operative methods which would not con- 
flict with the higher law? 

Creative Love June 24. I remember hearing a certain 
Versus War lecture on philosophy. The lecturer 
and Plunder stated that the universe owes its exist- 
ence to spontaneous activity of creative 
Love. 

If this be so, shall we who have arrived 
at the self-conscious life — the nearest to 
god-life we know of — shall we continue 
to tear and rend each other, as in wars 
between peoples, and to devour our con- 
scious fellow-beings as the flesh-eaters 
do? The microbe, the lowest in the scale 
of existence, devours his fellow-creatures 
— the microbe and the tiger and the 
hyena, who have not arrived at the stage 
of a likeness to the Divine at which man 
is arriving in the self-conscious life. 



104 



IN HARMONY 

The few, the "Saving remnant," desire to Creative Love 
"do justly and to love mercy" and to ex- Versus War 
tend this law to their fellow-man, as also niul Plunder 
to their other fellow-creatures the ani- 
mals, and the birds, and the fishes, and 
all sentient creatures; not taking the 
sweetness out of that life by selfish exac- 
tion or selfish indifference, nor by taking 
that life itself — the outcome of spontane- 
ous divine joy — which life they cannot 
give and to which we see that we hold 
no title, when we enter into the self- 
conscious life — the life that knows and 
knows that it knows; the life which re- 
flects upon its own divinity. 
It is said of Jesus that to all who received 
him he gave the power to become the 
Sons of God. This means that Jesus saw 
that they who receive the truths which 
he taught — the truths of the brotherhood 
of man and the fatherhood of God — do 
become, in spirit, the Sons of God. 
Jesus saw that man is divine. He de- 
clared that the kingdom of heaven is in 
the soul itself. If, then, man is divine 
and possesses heaven within him why 
not acknowledge this divine nature and 
act upon it? 

The highest thought must reach out in 
ever}^ direction by virtue of its power, as 
light radiates from the sun filling all 
space. The moral insight of philosophy 

105 



IN HARMONY 

is the deepest secret of life; it consists 
of rational, disciplined sympathy. It is 
the key to the divine outreach of Jesus' 
thought and activity — of Buddha's, of 
Socrates. 
The Life June 29. The life of the Soul is like the 
oftheSotil surface of the globe. There are broad 
Like the Glole continents with here and there great 
in Variety cities of the mind and heart. There are 
serene lakes, happy valleys, dark forests 
filled with savage beasts and birds of 
prey, gloomy volcanos burning and burst- 
ing with woe. There are mighty rivers 
and laughing streams, lofty mountains, 
austere and remote, touching heaven. 
The Soul passes now over the great Sa- 
hara Desert. There is no friend, no com- 
panion, no familiar; arid sands only. 
On the edge of the far horizon she can 
scarcely discern a few dark specks. They 
are the palm trees which she has been 
forced to leave behind. Beautiful and 
erect they stand, but lost to her. Memory's 
mocking mirage alone is here reflecting 
happy days of other lands. 

The Crushed July 3. The Lonely Human Soul has the 
Herb's eye for celestial sight, the ear for celes- 
Fragrance tial music; else how could she bear the 
Hour of pain and lonely sorrow? Often 
when helpless misery threatens to over- 
whelm her, all the pain, the loneliness 

106 



IN HARMONY 

and the sorrow are gently withdrawn, 
and in their place appear the smiling 
joys of heaven, in tint and form of cloud, 
in song of bird, in the sweet silences of 
trees. As the crushed herb gives up its 
inmost fragrance, so the heart when most 
deeply bruised awakens to the finest 
thought. 

In her most unhappy moments the Soul 
then sees with clearest vision the incom- 
parable beauty of Nature, that extreme, 
tender beauty and deep peace which 
adorns each bud and flower, leaf and 
stalk, branch and trunk, bird and cloud, 
form and color, scent and tone. 
"'Tis whispered balm, 
'Tis sunshine spoken." 
As though the very anguish of the spirit 
moved to sweet charity the bosom of the 
great Mother. 

July 5. There is a bird with a poem in The Bird 
his heart that comes at rare intervals to with a 
visit me. He has never permitted me to Poet's Heart 
see him, only to listen to his violincello 
tones which breathe out enthusiasm, pas- 
sion and despair. It is the spirit of 
Mignon. 

July 6. I am in the midst of a throng 
of lovely beings — flowers plucked and 
brought to my bedside, honeysuckles, 
sweet peas, larkspur, marigolds, black- 

107 



IN HARMONY 

The Flowers' eyed Susans, field-daisies. The scent of 
Death-Song the flower betrays the nature of the Soul, 
as Swedenborg declared the spirit of man 
exhales its sweet or foul odor as thought 
is pure or indecent. When the living 
smell departs, the soul of the flower has 
fled to the paradise of its mortality. 

The Inner July 7. The way the Soul has ever come 
Voice to say anything that may be worth read- 
ing is this: She lies still and drifts 
naturally into the contemplative mood, 
when suddenly and without effort the 
inner Voice begins to speak. 

The July 8. I am arriving at that point 
Empyrean when material nature is not sufficient. 
of Ideas I move in the world of thought far more 
than in the world of observation. When 
ideas cease to flow, then life seems dull 
and worthless. There is need to spread 
the wings of the Soul for yet a higher 
mount into the Empyrean of Ideas. 
Visible and audible nature becomes a 
mere perch from which to start on the 
winged flight upward and out and be- 
yond. I wish my thought to feed others 
as great writers' thoughts feed me. 

July 9. When the Soul awakens in the 
morning, life appears unreal and dream- 
like. It is a daily rite that necessity im- 
poses upon her of re-identifying herself 
for the new day; a recalling of what she 

108 



IN HARMONY 

was yesterday, a restating of personal When Life 
relations to people and things. Only as Appears 
the day advances does the Soul stand on Unreal 
firmer ground, where experience and 
things become real. Especially does a 
state of suffering and unhappiness ap- 
pear strange and dreamlike. When the 
Soul is happy and at peace, then life be- 
comes a reality. Most of the life of the 
Soul, then, has appeared as a dream from 
which she has awakened occasionally to 
the happy reality. Dreams during sleep 
often appear more real than her waking 
life. 

July 10. I have seen it stated that Madame 
Madame de Stael said of herself that de Stael 
none of her faculties had ever been fully 
developed save only the faculty of suf- 
fering. 

July 11. Do you know what it is to The Poetry 

realize the poetry of life — to know how of Life 

the vision often lifts the present burden 

of pain? You see j^ourself as you may 

see the image of a person in a vision, 

in a magic mirror, a character in a book, 

a figure in a great painting. You see 

that which is to come — the future — as 

you see that which has been — the past. 

Poetry lifts you up out of the present 

prosaic ennui. Your step quickens. 

Your eye brightens. Your spirit is 

109 



IN HARMONY 
buoyed up. What is it? Wherefore? 
You see the ships, far out on the horizon, 
coming full sail, with joy, for you! 
You are no longer bounded by the com- 
monplace facts about you. You have 
leapt over them. You have entered the 
world of the illimitable. The actual is 
limited, says Victor Hugo, the possible is 
immense. Poetry carries you up into the 
world of the possible. 

Poetry July 12. Poetry makes rich. The poet 
Makes Bich owns the wealth of all the world. He 
is life's millionaire. The poet sees the 
young man, lately wedded, going to his 
day's work in the journeyman's dress, 
his implements across his shoulders, 
singing, as he walks with swinging step. 
All the sweet happiness lying hidden in 
his heart belongs to the poet also, and 
the poet is happy with his happiness, 
and w^ith him sings the song of joy. 

The Cost July 14. The world is of divine sub- 
of the stance. The agony and the pain are 
Eight Boad proof that it is tremendously worth 
while to be in harmony with Eternal 
Nature. Go against Nature and anguish 
and tears proclaim from the house-tops 
that the right road is lost and shall be 
found only at every cost. Groans and 
tears purify the world, turning the Soul 
back into the right road. Quoth Saint 

110 



IN HARMONY 

Anthony: "The soul that is built up in 
virtue must be built up in tears." "Steep 
and craggy is the path of the gods," said 
Porphyry. 

July 15. The seed in the Soul needs The Beautiful 
the right soil — as the grain-seed in the Tree of Poetry 
earth — before the beautiful tree of poetry 
may spring forth to spread its sheltering 
branches, to give its pleasant shade, to 
flower, to bear its fruit of beauty and 
inner joy. If the soil be not ripe, vain 
are the hopes and wishes to see the tree 
spring forth in mind of friend, brother, 
sister, child. 

I see people with faces sad and weary. 
No joy, no inner well-springs of sweet 
waters. Maras only; at best with the 
pallid hopes of the churches playing 
upon their bloodless faces — of a reward 
hereafter for belief in this world in cer- 
tain doctrines, and not because of moral 
living and purity of thought. I long to 
give those sad lives some sweetness now, 
of the life lived here beneath this 
pleasant Shade Tree, where food for the 
soul is never lacking, nor distilled juices 
of her fairest fruits to slake the spirit- 
thirst. I may nourish and water but 
can not plant. "Poets are born, not 
made." Nature, that just and bountiful 
Mother, puts the little seed in all. In few 

111 



IN HARMONY 

The Beautiful souls is found the rich soil in which the 
Tree of Poetry seed may grow — the seed that lies deep 
beneath the accumulated rubbish of the 
opinions of ages, so that it can not reach 
the sunshine of truth in which to grow. 
It perishes unseen and unknown in dark- 
ness below, and the starved soul feeds 
upon the "husks of old, dead opinion, wan 
and wasted for lack of joy and beauty, 
little dreaming of the divine seed hidden 
within. In some rare souls the pile of 
rubbish does not accumulate, so clean, 
so pure, so childlike are they. They do 
not take on the conventions, the lifeless 
customs of beliefs. The seed springs 
forth. The tree grows apace. The Soul 
can say with Confucius: "With a few 
grains of rice, a cup of cold water, and 
my bended arm for a pillow, I still know 
joy." 

The people go hungry and thirsty along 
the road of life, sweating and sinking be- 
neath the scorching rays of the sun and 
over the arid desert sands; not heeding 
the little seed within them, which could 
bring forth the beautiful Tree of Poetry 
to refresh their weary souls. They have 
closed their ears and hear not the voice 
of Nature calling to them: "Toil not 
neither spin the warp and woof of false 
beliefs. Open your eyes. Behold the 
divine presence of Life now. Postpone 

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IN HARMONY 

not that Beatific Vision to some uncer- 
tain, ghostly day of Hereafter. Know ye 
not, O ye of little faith, that your 
Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need 
of these things?" 

The beautiful Tree of Poetry shelters 
from the arid sands and the scorching 
heat on the great, dusty road of life. 
You bear the tiny seed within you. Let 
it grow. 

July 24. In music the Soul catches hold Music 
of something from out the abysm of the 
Infinite. It is touched, only to be lost 
in the same instant. The Soul seeks 
in despair for that tone, for that ex- 
quisite thrill of love, for that one flash 
of light which came and was not, which 
possessed her being 3et which had no 
tangible existence. Music is the contact 
of the Soul with God. 

July 25. I had thought I knew some i Knoiv Only 
philosophy. I find I know only my My Ignorance 
ignorance. Even this is a far step on 
the way and the first real gain towards 
proceeding further. Few know their 
ignorance. 

July 26. What a wonderful work — that 
of building up a Self or world of beauti- 
ful thoughts and ideas! The bird sings. 
Its tones convey to me ideas of spiritual 
beauty and purity. 

113 



Inspiration 

and 

Purposive 

Action 



Mediocrity 
and Genius 



Sons of God 



IN HARMONY 

Let the great reservoir of the Self be 
ever kept open to the highest aspiration, 
even open to receive the impossible. But 
when any particular work is to be under- 
taken, then look well about. Know 
surely just what are your materials, that 
your present acquirements are sufficient 
for achievement. Then draw within 
your limits and work. 

July 27. The difference between medi- 
ocrity and genius is that the former lives 
and acts by instincts and conventions, 
while genius lives and acts by intellect 
and imagination. 

July 28. To be a god one need not be 
a supreme god. A god is a being pos- 
sessed of divine powers. Man is such 
a god. All his power is god-power. 
Does he not mount up into heaven when 
he puts the sun in his science-scales and 
marks down the weight thereof? Or 
when he travels into space and tallies 
the nebulae, outreaching beyond the 
Milky Way — that highroad of life, whose 
very dust is composed of countless 
galaxies of suns — ? yet does he take his 
evening and morning stroll far out be- 
yond that infinite Rim of Being. 
Man is a god when he brings forth the 
hidden energies of nature compelling 
them to fetch and carry for him as his 



114 



IN HARMONY 

slaves. Man is a god when he reads the Sons of God 
Hieroglyphic Book of Truth, in his own 
higher reason and in his heart. It is 
then he ascends to Olympus and sees 
God, his Father, face to face, in sacred 
kinship in the moral Ideal. Above all 
is he a god when he ceases to desire 
vengeance and forgives those who have 
wronged him; when he knows and loves 
the law and recognizes mercy as the 
higher justice. 

To be a god man need not be such a 
being as Heine supposed that Hegel 
claimed him to be; that is, one who can 
have external and mechanical control 
over all things in heaven and earth; one 
who can perform miracles in the old 
dogmatic sense; which indeed is a vul- 
gar interpretation to give to the act or 
event called a miracle. Man, to me, is 
a god in a far better and higher sense 
than that. Jesus saw that man is a god. 
He declared that men would do greater 
works than he; that men are the sons 
of God. If a human being has a son, is 
not the son a human being? If God have 
sons, are they not gods, by nature and 
inheritance? 

August 3. It is the poem of her own 
life that engages the attention of the 
Soul and absorbs her reflection. As 

115 



IN HARMONY 

The Poem of novelists and poets write of the lives of 

My Own Life imaginary persons, so does the Soul write 

of her own life. Most persons are 

myopic and can not see, for the nearness, 

the poetry of their own lives. 

Genius Makes August 4. It is the thought that sur- 

a New Era rounds us which makes us what we are. 

Genius alone rises above the common 

thought and makes a new era for the 

people. 

Memories August 7. Voices divine of string and 
horn — the aspiration of the dominant, 
the home-returning tones of the tonic! 
The heaven-high tones in the lights and 
tints of Nature, and her deep heart-tones 
in colors and shadow! 
The mountains! and the summer sun 
gently sinking beyond the ridge. The 
little grasshopper's summer song and the 
dirge song of my heart — no more to hear 
the footsteps I love coming up to me 
from the old Home abandoned, now a 
wilderness — to me, sitting alone in my 
cottage — and the mountains echoing 
voices divine of string and horn, and 
the dirge song of my heart echoing the 
music of the past! 

August 8. It is the stern principles of 
philosophy which have prevented the 
Soul from sinking into despair. They 
are the silent voices which sound in the 

116 



IN HARMONY 

Soul forever, forbidding her to falter. The Cheering 
She would have died long ago, had it Principles of 
not been for these inner voices. In lone- Philosaphy 
liness, shame, humiliation, neglect, pain, 
weakness, darkness and silence of years, 
they have sustained and upheld her. 
They illuminate the silence and the dark- 
ness of her prison. They have softened 
and consoled the dreary length of soli- 
tary days. They have pointed to the way 
out of misery. They have cheered, up- 
held and encouraged her sinking foot- 
steps. They have spoken to her when 
there was no human voice to speak. 
They have unraveled the tangled thought 
when all was perplexity. They have 
been the pillar of fire by night and the 
pillar of cloud by day, as the Soul has 
wandered, lost, in the wilderness these 
"forty days" of her hundred months. 

August 9. Religion believes in God. Philosophy 
Philosophy explains God. Agnosticism Versus 
is no philosophy at all. Philosophy is an Agnosticism 
affirmation but Agnosticism is a nega- 
tion. The aim of philosophy is to ex- 
plain the universe. Agnosticism denies 
that there can be any explanation. 
August 10. A person of genius is like A Person 
the sun. Swift is the circulation of his of Genius 
thought. He is made up of forces that 
culminate in C3^clones and hurricanes. 

117 



IN HARMONY 

Do not approach too near. You are liable 
to be scorched and burned. At a safe 
distance he becomes a beneficent power 
giving light to all who turn their faces 
toward him — a bright star of beauty, in- 
spiration and love. 

Four Moments August 11. There are four moments of 
of Life life in which Happiness has appeared 
to the Soul: When Philosophy has 
opened the sanctuary and elevated the 
host of Truth; when Poetry has lighted 
her altar with stars; when the eyes of 
Sorrow have been lifted in gratitude; 
when the voice of Love has spoken its 
benediction. 

A Drive in August 12. There they are the sweet 
the Mountains fields — some painted brown, some gray, 
some purpled o'er with little weed-tufts. 
In the great drought the sun goes down 
like a ball of bloody yet burnished brass. 
Night comes on and the young moon is 
a ruddy crescent. The trees stand silent 
and solemn. The Poet would be glad to 
spend the night with them; to tramp 
along the road in the cool darkness; to 
watch the lonely farmhouses with their 
solitary lights shine out from the small 
windows. 

But the horses dash forw^ard over the 
steep hills and the friends will soon be 
home from their drive in the mountains. 

118 



IN HARMONY 

August 13. My uprisen thought of good As the 
health and harmony hovers over the SJieMnah 
physical part, leading the stricken body to Israel 
as the Shekinah irradiated the Ark of the 
Covenant before the Israelites. 

August 14. The utility, the efficacy, the Little Efforts 
resulting power of little efforts, of even 
the least, most incidental, ragged bits of 
things prove that all is divine, that all 
is composed of god-stuff. 
As the material vesture of all science, 
philosophy, art, literature is composed of 
rags — old, dirty, frayed bits and ends, 
the very leavings and cast-offs of living 
— thrown aside as useless — yet from such 
as these come forth the magnificent 
libraries of the world: so this Journal 
which was begun in moments of sheer 
despair, with the hope only of catching 
a few outlines, a rag, a bit-end of thought 
and feeling; this poor Journal has been 
deemed fit to pass under the eyes of one 
who knows,* and he tells me that he is 
interested in reading it — interested in 
reading the bits and rags of thought- 
life. O marvelous existence, that thy 
very shreds and refuse may be a medium 
of vital communication with what is holy 
and divine! 



'John Burroughs. 



119 



IN HARMONY 

Good Only August 15. I know that good only is 
IsBeal real. It exists of necessity. Evil does 
not exist of necessity. It is a spurious 
manufacture. That which exists of 
necessity is eternal. Good only is 
eternal. 



120 



HERE ENDS THE UNIVERSAL ORDER, AS 
WRITTEN BY FRIEDERIKA QUITMAN OGDEN. 
PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM BY PAUL ELDER 
& COMPANY, AND PRINTED AT THEIR TOMOYE 
PRESS, IN THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, 
DURING THE MONTH OF AUGUST, NINETEEN 
HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN. 







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